I will not leave you orphaned: Easter 6

 Easter 6 2026

Acts 17.22-31, John 14. 15-21

“I will not leave you orphaned” says Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. I wonder what images come to your mind when you hear the word “orphan”. Perhaps Little Orphan Annie, or Harry Potter, or a character from Charles Dickens – his stories are full of orphans like Oliver Twist or Pip from Great Expectations. Orphans are common in Victorian novels, partly because there were so many of them, in an age when parents died of many things they would now easily survive. I’ve looked back into my family tree, and found my great-great grandfather, John, in a workhouse at the age of 5 with his older sister. His mother had died of cholera, and for a long time I couldn’t find any trace of his father. At 13, John was working as a farm labourer, then became a navvy, travelling around the country labouring to build the new-fangled railway system – which turned out to be the path his father had taken too, having to leave his children in the workhouse to grow up there, going from one railway site to another, rarely, if ever seeing them as he moved from job to job.  John eventually married and had his own family – 8 children – but they and his wife travelled with him around his navvying jobs, living in Railway huts in the temporary settlements that were built near each work site. It sounds as if he didn’t want to repeat the pattern he had known as a child. 

Or perhaps when you hear the word “orphan” you think of the many orphans there are around the world now in places where life is still fragile and perilous. There are reckoned to be around 153 million orphans in the world, and that number is being added to daily by conflict, poverty, poor health care and displacement. India alone has 30 million orphans.

The word “orphan” is a powerful and somewhat terrifying one. It is every parent’s worst nightmare to think of their children having to navigate the world alone, and every small child’s worst nightmare to find themselves alone without a friendly adult to help them. 

But of course Jesus isn’t speaking to small children when he speaks the words we heard today. He’s speaking to his disciples on the night before he dies. They are grown adults, burly fishermen who’ve sailed boats through gales, tax-collectors who’ve had to deal with the Roman political and military machine, women who have lived on the margins of their societies, and had to develop quick wits and courage. Yet he recognises that when they lose him, first to crucifixion and then as he ascends to his Father in heaven, they will feel lost, bereft, uncertain. They will have to make their own decisions, as they take on the work he has called them to. And it won’t be easy. They will face persecution. They will feel orphaned. 

The fact is that, however old we are, however much we’ve been through, we all come to points in our lives when we realise we can’t face life on our own, when we look around for someone who knows what they are doing or who at least looks as if they do. We may be grown up chronologically, but there’s a small child in each of us, looking for help and guidance. 

“I will not leave you orphaned” says Jesus. What does he mean? The rest of the reading makes it clear. Through his Holy Spirit, he says, they will feel his presence in an even deeper way than the way they have until then. Up until now, they have had to physically be with him to see him, hear him and feel him. But the Spirit of God will be within them, like the sap that rises through the grapevine, like the blood that circulates through their veins, closer than their own heartbeat. And the Spirit will be known too in their community – the Spirit isn’t some personal possession but will be in the love that draws them to each other. 

In our first reading, from the book of Acts, St Paul stands on a well-known debating place in Athens, the centre of philosophical learning in the ancient world. Athens was home to people of every philosophy, every religion and none. He had walked there past a bewildering array of shrines to this god and that goddess and had even found one to “the unknown god” – a way of hedging your bets just in case you’d left some god out of your worship. The shrines were mute testaments to the human longing to reach out beyond ourselves, to find support and care in a vast and sometimes lonely universe. But Paul is confident as he talks to these people that he has found the source of the love that really matters. “We are God’s offspring” he says. We are his own children, known, loved and held in his safe embrace, children of a God who loved us so much that he came among us himself, served us and died for us, and who builds us into a community so that we can share that love with one another, and let it spill out to others too.

“I will not leave you orphaned”. Whatever we face, we do not face it alone, but surrounded by love that nothing can destroy. 

Amen 

The gate for the sheep: Easter 4

 Easter 4 2026

John 10.1-10

“I am the gate for the sheep”, says Jesus. Gates and gatekeepers are very much the theme of the Gospel reading today, and that theme is just as relevant now as it was when the Gospel was written. Our news is full of debates about who belongs and who doesn’t - in our local communities, in our nation - and about who gets to decide that and on what grounds.

We are hardwired – like many other animals - to favour those who are like us, those who look or sound as if they are part of our tribe, and to be suspicious of those who don’t. It goes way back into our evolutionary history, but it can be very problematic. We don’t live in scattered kinship groups as our ancient ancestors did. We live in a complex interlinked world, where we need and are enriched by all sorts of people, and ideas, including those that are different from us. By the time we’ve had breakfast, our lives have touched and been touched by people on many continents. Our cup of tea – and what can be more English than that? – will probably have come from Kenya or India, our orange juice from Brazil. We are shaped by ideas that our ancestors might have thought foreign too. None of us would be sitting here in church, none of us would be calling ourselves Christians, if foreigners hadn’t, long ago, landed on these shores bringing news of a new faith, rooted in the life, death and resurrection of a man from the far-off, alien, Middle East. 

Yet we so often struggle to make real space for newcomers, not just tolerating them, but recognising them as people who come with gifts to share. That’s true on the small scale as well as the large. In friendship groups, in workplaces, in clubs and societies, in families, the incomer can struggle to be accepted, especially if they have the temerity to suggest some new way of doing things.   “Who do you think you are? This is our group. This is the way we’ve always done it…”

Gates and gatekeepers – they seem to be an inescapable feature of human life.  

And that brings me back to the Gospel where we find Jesus talking about gates and gatekeepers too, but who is he talking to? “Very truly I say to you”, he begins, but who are the “you” and what’s been happening to prompt his words?

If we look back at the chapter before this, Jesus is in Jerusalem, somewhere near the Temple – he’d actually just been chased out of the Temple by stone-throwing mob who were offended by the message he was preaching. As he’s walking along, he comes across a man who had been born blind, and he heals him. He spits on some mud, smears it on the man’s eyes and sends him off to wash, at which point the man discovers he can see, for the first time ever – hallelujah! Cue the general rejoicing, or so you might think. But, to cut a long story short, it doesn’t turn out that way. The onlookers, this man’s neighbours, don’t know what to make of it – they are very disturbed by what’s happened. They summon the Pharisees – religious experts - to come and give their opinion. Some people say he can’t be the same man as the blind beggar they’ve been walking past for years. The man’s parents are even summoned to bear witness to the fact that this is, in fact, their son. The man is asked to explain himself, but he can’t. All he knows is that someone called Jesus put mud on his eyes, told him to wash, and here he is, healed. What’s the problem with that? 

The problem is that the Pharisees have taken on the role of gatekeeper. They are the ones, they believe, who decide whether people are ‘in’ or ‘out’ of God’s favour, in or out of his family, and they are scandalised because  Jesus is not “one of them”. As far as they are concerned he is a sinner. He doesn’t interpret the Jewish law in the way they do. It doesn’t matter what he does, how self-evidently good it is, as far as they’re concerned it must be wrong, because he’s the one who is doing it.  

Eventually Jesus hears about the commotion, and comes to find out what’s going on. He rebukes the Pharisees. This man had been physically blind, he says, but their refusal to see God at work in their midst, to acknowledge this wonderful, blessed thing that had happened is a far worse sort of blindness. You can imagine how well that goes down.

They think of themselves as gatekeepers, protecting something vital, protecting the purity of their culture and religious tradition – maybe they even thought they were protecting God - but in reality their actions and attitudes are denying people – God’s beloved flock – the fulness of life God wants for them.  

Jesus talks of himself as the gate, and the shepherd who looks after that gate, but it’s not a gate that imprisons or restricts. It’s a gate which allows people through which people “come in and go out and find pasture,” somewhere which is safe so they can grow into people who have “life and have it abundantly”. 

That was the experience of the man he had healed. His blindness would have made it almost impossible for him to live anything like a normal life. Like many disabled people at the time, his only option to support himself was begging. It’s not just his eyes that are opened by his healing; it’s his whole life, his whole world, his potential, his place in his community. It’s all changed, and yet the Pharisees, and some of his own neighbours, seem to think it would have been better if things had stayed as they were for him. 

Today we are invited to look at ourselves, to look at the situations in which we may be tempted to “gatekeep”, to try to control and restrict other people’s access to God. Instead Jesus calls us to let him be the gate, and the gatekeeper, who can create a space that is far bigger than we imagine for a flock that is far bigger than we imagine, to “come in and go out and find pasture” so that they - and we - can live abundantly in the blessing God wants for us all.

Amen 

Questioning Thomas: Easter 2

 Easter 2 2026

There’s a great little feature in the Guardian each week called the Kids’ Quiz. It’s not a quiz for children, it’s a quiz by children. They set the quesitons – and very good questions they are too. 

Recently, Esther aged, 6, asked “how many lions are there in the world?”  Around 28000 is the answer, about a tenth of the number there were a century ago. Or Aariya, aged 7, asked why our little finger is sometimes called our pinkie finger. It turns out to be from an Old Dutch word, pink, which meant small. There is a complicated link between that and the colour pink – but you’ll have to ask me about that afterwards. 

I particularly loved a question from Rocco, aged 10, though. Why does water make clothes look darker, despite the fact that water has no colour? Good question, Rocco. The explanation, I learned from the quiz answers, is that the thin layer of water on top of wet clothes traps some of the light that would otherwise have bounced back to our eyes – it bounces around inside the layer of water instead. So, less light is reflected back to us which makes the clothes seem darker…

Children are great questioners. Of course they are, because the main job of a child is to learn and grow, and we can’t do that unless we are curious and prepared to ask questions. Perhaps I could have worked out why wet clothes are darker than dry ones, or googled it, or asked my husband – there’s no point in being married to a retired physics teacher if you don’t tap him for this sort of knowledge – but the truth is that I had never thought to wonder, never thought to ask the question. 

Every year, on this Sunday after Easter, we hear the story of Thomas. He’s often called Doubting Thomas, but really it would be far more accurate, and far fairer, to call him Questioning Thomas. A man who isn’t content simply to go along with the crowd but needs to know things for himself, to ask his own questions, and make his own decisions.

We only meet him a few times in the Gospels, but when we do, this is the thing that stands out about him. For example, at the Last Supper, Jesus speaks of his death and says he is going away “to prepare a place for you”, he tells the disciples that “you know the way to the place where I am going”. The rest of the disciples do that thing that we all do when we haven’t got a clue what someone is talking about but don’t want to look stupid. They nod politely, look blank, and keep quiet.

But not Thomas. He says, “Lord we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” It’s a perfectly sensible response. Your satnav won’t give you directions to Maidstone if you don’t tell it that Maidstone is where you want to go.  

And Jesus’ honours Thomas’ question – the only person who is honest enough to say “I don’t know!” . “I am the way, the truth and the life”, he says. That might not seem to make things much clearer, but it tells Thomas, and us, that it is Jesus himself who is the map. Following his way of life, a way of sacrificial, generous love, will take us where we need to go. 

And now, in today’s Gospel reading, here is Jesus honouring Thomas’ questioning nature again. Has Jesus really risen from the dead, Thomas wants to know? He isn’t simply going to believe it because the other disciples say so. That’s just groupthink.  He needs to know for himself. And Jesus honours that. He turns up for him, just for him. Thomas matters that much. His questions matter that much. 

Of course, as Jesus says, there will be others – including those for whom John is writing his Gospel, including us – who won’t get to see the risen Christ in the way that Thomas does, but this story tells us that it’s ok to question, in fact it’s vital to question. Otherwise our faith isn’t our faith, it’s just something we are borrowing from others, going along with because they do, or because it’s how we were brought up. 

I grew up going to church with my family, but my own Christian faith really came alive for the first time when a teacher at my school started a Christian club. I was about 10 or 11. One day the teacher read a passage from Isaiah – “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near”. And it hit me between the eyes – I was being called out on a great big God hunt – not in the sense that God was hiding, but in the sense that I was being called to discover him day by day, to open my eyes to his presence, to see him for myself.  Fifty-five years or so later, I’m still doing that, expecting God to surprise me. Where might I find God today, who might I see him in, what might I discover, how might I learn to love more and better? 

We thought about good questions earlier – why do wet clothes look darker than dry ones? – but I wonder what our questions about faith might be? They might be deeply personal, or they might be ones that we can share. They might be questions that can be answered in a sermon, or with a conversation with someone – I know all the clergy and lay ministry team here in our benefice would be happy to listen. Or they might be ones that lead us towards baptism, or confirmation, or some form of training or further study, or to join a home group where we can discuss faith with others. There are a number around the benefice, and more can be arranged!

Thomas’ story invites us to be aware of and honour our own questions, just as God honours them, to ask those questions – of ourselves, of others, of God - because each of us is called out on our own journey. And who knows where that journey might lead us? 

Thomas, according to legend, ended up travelling east with the Gospels, and is acclaimed by the people of South India as the one who brought the Good News to them.

We may not be called to make such a dramatic journey, but our journeys of faith are just as important, to us, to others, and to God, and they start with that gift of holy curiosity which Questioning Thomas shows us. 

Amen 

Earth-shattering news: Easter Sunday 2026

 

Easter Sunday 2026

Acts 10.34-43, Matthew 28.1-10

Acts 10.34-43

34 Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, 35 but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. 36 You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. 37 That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: 38 how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. 39 We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40 but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42 He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. 43 All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.’

 

 

Matthew 28.1-10

28 After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

 

We’ve just heard Matthew’s version of the Resurrection story. It’s a dramatic tale, with an earthquake and an angel appearing, shining like lightning.

 Each of the Gospel writers tells the story of the Resurrection slightly differently. Different numbers of women come to the tomb, meeting different numbers of angels, or perhaps Jesus himself. Different things happen afterwards. All the Gospel writers agree on is that the tomb was empty, the women were witnesses of that, and that it changed everything…

 But back to Matthew’s account. He’s the only one who actually shows us  the tomb being opened, and the guards shaking “like dead men” when it happens. He’s the only one who tells us about the earthquake: his story is literally earth-shattering.  

 That’s all of a piece with the rest of his Gospel. From the outset he has painted his picture of Jesus’ life on a large scale. When Jesus was born a star appeared in the sky – the very cosmos was reordered. Wise men from the East turned up at the palace, the political heart of the nation. “King Herod was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him” we are told. Not for Matthew a bunch of humble shepherds who no one would have noticed or heeded. No, this is a very public event – so public that it unleashes a massacre of the children of Bethlehem and means the Holy Family have to run for their lives.

 Much later, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday, it’s not just his disciples who notice. Once again “The whole city was in turmoil”, Matthew says. And when Jesus dies on the cross there isn’t just darkness over the land – all the Gospels have that – but according to Matthew there’s another earthquake, prefiguring the one that will accompany Jesus’ resurrection.  “The earth shook, the rocks were split . The tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised….”

Sometimes Christians are told that they should keep their noses out of politics, or economics, or science or whatever else they’ve made some comment on that has annoyed someone, that they should restrict themselves to the spiritual, the personal, the private. But Matthew’s Gospel isn’t having any of that. Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection sends quite literal shockwaves through the world of his time, having an impact even on the earth itself. Everything is changed by this, says Matthew.

 And as I said earlier, the other Gospel writers agree with him, even if they tell the story in slightly different ways. The reason they are all so confident about this is that the resurrection had changed everything for them.

The Gospels were written in hindsight, looking back at the events they describe from several decades later. And they are written by and for people whose lives have been set on a different course because of the resurrection, people who have become part of new communities, with a new message for the world. We catch a glimpse of that radical change in our first reading.

St Peter is preaching to the household of a Roman centurion called Cornelius, a Gentile leader in the army that is oppressing Israel, someone who ought to be his enemy. But Cornelius has heard about Jesus and has asked Peter to come and tell him more. When Peter gets there, having struggled over whether to go or not, he finds that Cornelius and his household have had an experience of the Holy Spirit – God has got there before him. And he realises – and rejoices - that this is how it is going to be in God’s new creation, in the kingdom Jesus’ resurrection has ushered in. He sees new life, forgiveness, barriers broken down, resurrection happening all around him.

I have no idea what we would have seen if there had been a video camera livestreaming that first Easter Sunday at the tomb. I have no idea how the resurrection could have happened, but I am convinced that it did happen – even if I can’t understand or explain it - because the first followers of Jesus were so changed by their experience of it, filled with such hope and faith, that they were prepared to die for affirming it.  They had nothing to gain by lying about it – there was no power or glory on offer for them, only persecution. And yet they said that it was true, and went on saying it, and passed it on to the next generation and the next, and people continued to find hope in it, right down to us in our own time. The ultimate proof of the resurrection is us, the Church, Christians stubbornly insisting, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, that “Goodness is stronger than evil; Love is stronger than hate; Light is stronger than darkness; Life is stronger than death; Victory is ours through Him who loves us”

Another Bishop, Mervyn Stockwood, then the Bishop of Southwark, told a story of a time when he was in Moscow, before the fall of the Soviet Union, when Brezhnev was president. He had gone into the hairdresser’s salon in his hotel for a shave while on a visit to the USSR. It was around the time of Easter. As she shaved him the hairdresser noticed his episcopal cross and ring. “Was he a bishop?” she asked. He was, he said. Evidently she’d had an orthodox background, because she stopped shaving him, took his cross in her hands and kissed it, and did the same to his ring. And then, lifting up the razor blade she was shaving him with she called to the customers in the barber’s shop “Alleluia, Christ is risen” and with one voice they all replied “He is risen indeed, Alleluia!” Stockwood wrote in his memoirs that he thought to himself at that moment “Poor old Brezhnev: sixty years of atheism, and still the Galilean conquers!”

This Easter Sunday, I wonder where the Galilean needs to conquer in our lives and our world. Where are the tombs of despair and hatred that need to be broken open? Where are the place that seem godforsaken where we need to find the God who never forsakes us at work? He is there, if like those women at the tomb, we will only go and look for him. I wonder what the reality of the resurrection looks like in our lives? Matthew told his story in his way. Peter told his in another. Mark, Luke and John told it too, in their ways, but how would you tell it, this story of the empty tomb that changes everything…?

Amen

 

Mothering Sunday: Abundant Consolation

 2 Corinthians 1.3-7, Luke 2. 33-35

I was listening to someone last week who had come to talk to me – as part of my ministry in retirement I give support to others in lay or ordained roles in the church. Her husband has been living with cancer for quite a while, but now, although he is still fairly well in himself, the treatment options have been exhausted. After all the ups and downs, all the hoping that something might work, they know it is just a matter of time and, eventually, palliative care. And yet, she was remarkably calm. “We don’t know exactly what this journey will involve” she said, “but we do know that there are so many people praying for us, and that God is with us.” She and her husband had found great consolation through the prayers and support of those around her.

I reflected with her that her words had reminded me of one of the readings set for today’s services, and she gave me permission to quote her words. 

In the short passage we heard from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, again and again Paul uses the word “consolation” or consoled, or some variation on it. Ten times in the space of 4 verses. It’s a translation of the Greek word parakaleo, and in some ways it’s not a very good translation. The Greek word literally means to “come alongside when someone calls”. That’s the essence of the consolation Paul is talking about – someone who comes alongside us, who travels with us. The Holy Spirit is sometimes called the Paraclete – God beside us and within us day by day, but a paraclete, a consoler, can be human too. Not someone who fixes things for us, but someone who simply shares the journey.

Paul was much in need of consolation at this point. The verses around those we read tell us that he’d been in Asia – modern day Turkey – and had been through tough times there. “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed,” he says, “that we despaired of life itself”. 

And he knows things have been hard for the Corinthians too – they endure the same sufferings he does.

Paul often faced persecution, attack and arrest because of his preaching. The only way he could avoid it would be by abandoning his faith, but that’s not an option for him. It matters too much to him to give it up. He chose to walk a hard and dangerous road. The Corinthian Christians faced the same challenges as they tried to live out the Gospel message, facing “the same sufferings that we are also suffering”, Paul says.

How will Paul cope? How will the Corinthians cope? How will any of us cope with troubles that come upon us, the things that we have no way of avoiding? 

This Lent, as you know, we are following a theme of healing in our Sunday services – physical healing, healing of relationships and of the spirit, healing of our world. Today, Mothering Sunday, was, I think, meant to be a break from that theme, but it seems to me that the readings set for today do have a link with the question of healing, and it’s a very important link. What do we do, these readings ask us, about situations in which there’s no prospect of healing, in any physical sense? What do we do when there’s no way around suffering, when we have to go through it? That might be the suffering of persecution as it was for Paul. And, in our Gospel reading, Simeon warns Mary, that she will suffer because of her son’s ministry. He is only a baby at this point, but his ministry will bring the wrath of the powerful down on him and she will have to watch him be crucified. “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” Says Simeon. Or it might be the far more familiar suffering that the lady who was talking to me faced, of watching a loved one endure an illness that can’t be cured.

One of the hardest parts of mothering, or fathering, or caring for anyone we love is knowing that we can’t prevent their suffering, that we haven’t got the magic wand we long for. The price of love is grief, people sometimes say – we can’t love others without opening ourselves up to sorrow. But Paul’s words remind us that what we can do is to recognise that we, and they, don’t make the journey alone, that we are accompanied by a great crowd of paracletes, those who are alongside us. Suffering may be abundant, as Paul says, but consolation is abundant too if we are open to it.

Chief among these paracletes, of course, is God himself – the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation.” He is the one who comes alongside us in Jesus, who lived among us, died alongside two criminals, and who is present through the Spirit alongside us day by day. It is his consolation, his “alongsiding” which gives us the strength to be alongside others, and which helps us to see those who are alongside us and accept their help as we make those journeys that otherwise seem impossible. 

So on this Mothering Sunday we give thanks for all who have been alongside us through our lives, and we pray, as the words of our collect reminded us, “that in joy and in sorrow we may know the power of God’s presence,” which is alongside us always.

Amen

Lent 3

 Lent 3 2026

Psalm 42, John 3.1-15

I expect quite a few of you, like me, come from the generation that was expected at school to memorise all sorts of things – from mathematical formulae to large chunks of poetry. Most of the maths has evaporated from my mind, alas, but I can still, with a following wind, recite Portia’s speech from the Merchant of Venice – the quality of mercy is not strained etc.. Hymns and songs often etch themselves into our memories too. I have often found, when taking services in care homes, that residents who don’t remember much else can are word perfect on their favourite hymns.  

It’s not just words that we learn “by heart” though. How many skills have we picked up over the years which seemed hard when we first did them, but eventually became second nature to us? It may be plastering a wall, knitting, playing a musical instrument or operating a computer – it will be different for each of us – but there are some things we may not even have to think about anymore, which we do by muscle memory. We’ve learned them by heart. 

“By heart” is an interesting phrase. It implies that these things have, in a sense, become part of us. We can’t forget them, even if we try; they have become woven into our being.

In our readings today, we meet people who are thinking about what they have “learned by heart” and what they might still need to learn.

The Psalmist writes of his longing for God. We don’t know what has happened, but it’s clear that things aren’t going well for him. He feels oppressed by his enemy; and he feels as if God has forgotten him. And yet, at the same time, he can’t leave behind the habit of prayer, the memory of God’s love, the times when he has found hope and joy in God before. These are the things that are in his spiritual “muscle memory”. He may feel abandoned, but he has taken deep into himself over the years, learned by heart, the knowledge that God isn’t like that; he doesn’t abandon people. “My soul is cast down within me” he says, “therefore I remember you – that’s God… “Hope in God,” he tells himself, “for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” 

The Psalm doesn’t deny or soft-pedal the reality of tough times, which come to all of us. We feel how we feel, and we don’t need to pretend to be happy when we’re not. But it reminds us that the God who we felt close to in the good times is the same God now, and still loves us, even if we feel as if he’s far away. “By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life”. 

The very fact that the Psalmist cries out to God, thirsts for him, reminds him – and us - that God is still real and still matters to him. He is the God of his life. The things he has learned “by heart” about God hold him when the events he is going through threaten to overwhelm him. 

In the Gospel reading, we meet a man who has also learned things “by heart”, but now he is having to re-evaluate them completely – sometimes we have learned by heart things that don’t turn out to be helpful, negative messages about ourselves, prejudices about others. He comes to Jesus “in the dark”. That doesn’t just tell us about the time of day, but that this is a man who doesn’t want to be seen, who feels confused and doesn’t want to admit it. The world he thought he knew, the assumptions he has made about life and about faith, don’t seem to make sense to him anymore and that is hard for him to acknowledge. 

He, Nicodemus, is a respected religious expert, someone who is supposed to know what’s what, and who thought he did. Jesus is a carpenter from the backwater village of Nazareth, with no qualifications to his name, no training, no background. And yet Nicodemus sees something in him that he can’t deny is of God. He calls Jesus “teacher”; he knows there is something he needs to learn from him, but perhaps doesn’t realise how radical that will be. Jesus tells him that he needs to start again, to be born “from above” or born anew, depending on your translation, to open himself to a new vision of the world, to learn “by heart” a new understanding of God. Unless he does that, says Jesus, he won’t be able to “see the kingdom of God”. Jesus isn’t talking about Nicodemus getting a ticket to heaven when he dies; seeing the kingdom of God is about being aware of what God is doing right there, right then in Jesus.

Nicodemus knows he is missing something, like the deer that thirsts for the flowing waters in the Psalm, but finding it will take time. There will be a journey to make. Being born takes time. Learning something by heart takes time. Getting to that point where something new is second nature isn’t an instant business. 

At the end of his encounter with Jesus, Nicodemus goes away without having made any commitment. But we will meet him again, first in chapter 7 of John’s Gospel when other Pharisees are plotting against Jesus. Nicodemus challenges them, saying that Jesus should at least be given a fair hearing. And then, after Jesus dies, Nicodemus finally comes out of the shadows, bringing spices and ointment to anoint Jesus’s body, assisting at his burial. It’s taken him several years, but Nicodemus has made his choice; he has let his heart be changed by the Spirit of God. The fact that the Gospel writer names him suggests that the change was permanent, that he did, in time “learn by heart” the way of Christ and become a member of the Christian community, valued by them, his story told, his name known. 

In our Lenten series of sermons on healing, today’s theme is the healing of the spirit. It’s a healing that starts when we acknowledge our thirst for God, like the deer that longs for the flowing streams, but it needs to continue from that point, allowing that thirst to take us on a journey, learning by heart a new way as we go, which will leads us to the water that never fails. 

Amen 

Lent 1: Healing at Bethesda

 

Lent 1 2026

2 Cor 12.1-10, John 5.1-15

 

Throughout the benefice during Lent the decision has been made to have a theme of healing running through sermons, readings and the various Lent groups that are meeting.

 

So, expect to hear healing explored from all sorts of angles, from whoever is standing here over the next five weeks or so. Healing is a very appropriate theme for Lent. This is a time when we are encouraged to reflect on ourselves and our world. We don’t get very far in doing that without seeing that there are all sorts of things in us and around us which need to be healed. It may be physical healing we long for, for ourselves or someone else, but it might equally be healing in our hearts or our spirits, in our relationships, in our society, in creation itself. All of these are places where we know things aren’t right, where we often see dis-ease of some sort or another.

 

But healing isn’t a straightforward issue – that’s pretty obvious too. We may pray earnestly for someone to be physically healed, and yet it doesn’t happen. Christian leaders or churches which promise miracles usually come to grief in the end. Some are exposed as cynical frauds. Others may be entirely sincere in their beliefs, but are so heavily invested in those miracles happening because their own worth, their own faith, their own ego depends on it that when people aren’t healed they blame the victim for not having enough faith, or not praying right, or they tell them that they must be sinful in some way or have deserved their illness, or are being punished. Or they simply increase the spiritual pressure- pray louder, pray longer -  until prayer itself becomes abusive. It sounds a bit strange to say that healing needs to come with a health warning, but sadly it does.

 

It seems to me that there are two factors that are often involved when healing ministry goes awry. The first is that we forget that we aren’t God. It ought to be obvious, but it isn’t. We like to think we are in control – life feels safer that way. Of course, there are things we can do to help ourselves and others to be healthy. Diet, exercise, sleep, access to health care, clean water, vaccinations, a pollution free environment. But even if we get all of that right, we can’t guarantee that we won’t fall ill, or be injured, and (spoiler alert) all of us will one day die. We’re not in control. We’re not God. And that means that when we pray for healing, we can’t make promises. All we can do is put ourselves and those we pray for into the hands of the one who is God. Our prayers for healing need to be rooted not in our own ego, or our anxious need to feel that we can pull the strings that will make God act, but in our trust that, whatever happens, we, and those we pray for are held in his hands and loved eternally. That’s a far more precious gift to receive, a far more vital lesson to learn.

 

The second factor that often leads to problems with healing ministry is that we don’t read the Bible enough – or rather that we don’t read enough of the Bible. We light upon one healing story, and we think that if healing came to that person that way, then all healing happens like that. All we have to do is follow the pattern it gives us. But the reality is that healing comes to people in the Bible in many different ways.   And the two readings we’ve heard today are a perfect example of that.

 

If all we had was today’s Gospel reading, what might we conclude about sickness and healing? The man who was lying by the pool at Bethzatha had been ill for 38 years, we are told. Do you only get healed if you have that much patience, if you wait that long? And yet in other stories people are healed quickly. Jesus asks this man by the poolside, “Do you want to be made well?” We might conclude that if someone isn’t healed it’s because they don’t want to be, not deep down, not really. And yet, in other stories, there’s no conversation at all. Jesus heals the unconscious, maybe even dead, daughter of a synagogue leader called Jairus. He heals a centurion’s servant who isn’t even present. Sometimes he heals with a touch, sometimes with a word, sometimes even with spit mixed with mud – I’d rather give that one a miss thanks! Sometimes he casts out demons, sometimes not.

 

A really problematic part of the story we heard today comes at the end, when Jesus tells the man not “to sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you”. Does that mean that disease is the result of sin? That can play into some really dark and damaging beliefs around healing – or might it just be that this particular man’s paralysis is the result of something he did that he shouldn’t have done. Just a few chapters later, Jesus explicitly challenges his disciples when they ask whether the blindness of a man he is about to heal is his fault or his parents – it’s no one’s fault, says Jesus.  We generalise at our peril.

 

And our first reading underlines that. St Paul writes to the Church in Corinth. He talks about the wonderful things that have happened to him, the visions he’s had, the calling he received from God on the road to Damascus, and the assurance that gave him of God’s love.  “I know a person in Christ” is just a roundabout way of referring to himself. And yet, he says, that doesn’t mean that everything in his life is easy. He has a “thorn in the flesh”. We don’t know whether that’s a physical ailment, a problematic relationship, or something spiritual, but whatever it is, despite his prayers, despite his faith, despite his close relationship with God, it hasn’t been taken away. Yet, he says, he’s come to see that through it he has learned to look for and to find God’s strength “made perfect in weakness” and that, in turn, has helped him face the “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities” that come to him as a result of his ministry.

 

So where does this all leave us as we start our Lenten exploration of healing? In one sense, we might be feeling that it’s all more complicated than we thought. But in another sense, perhaps it’s actually simpler. Healing, whether it’s physical, spiritual, relational, societal, cosmic, doesn’t depend on us following this ritual or that ritual, using these words or those words, or no words at all. It is found – in whatever form it takes - simply by realising that we are in the presence of God, who is closer to us than our own heartbeat, who doesn’t expect us to heal ourselves, or to heal others – because we can’t – but who invites us to find our rest in him as we pray, and place others for whom we pray into that rest as well, so that, as our collect today put it, “as you know our weakness, may  we know your power to save.”

Amen