ANZAC Day: Lest we forget – that the Lord is risen indeed!

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, on the Third Sunday after Easter, 19 April 2015, commemorating the centenary of Gallipoli:

‘Lest we forget’, is our national watchword for this day. Lest we forget the countless who gave their lives in the landings on Gallipoli we recall this week, in two world wars, and countless other conflicts since. Lest we forget those who died in acts of genocide, civil war and terror. Lest we forget that to this day people put their lives on the line for others—often as volunteers and just as often as innocent victims, helping neighbours caught between the lines. Yet in spite of our day of national remembrance, people frequently do choose to forget: not just when the focus of our news shifts from one trouble spot to another. Just as there are areas of conflict that hardly ever form part of our active remembrance.

The kind of remembrance that we practise on ANZAC Day is, by necessity, selective. Even the implicit underlying hope of ANZAC Day that, by remembering past national tragedies and sacrifice, we may somehow avert future conflict and wars remains, of course, only ever a fervent hope. The motivations for inner national and international conflicts and war—whether they arise out of greater national ambitions or the breakdown of relationships between ethnic and faith groups—are not removed by our remembering past conflicts and tragedies. The most careful study of past wars, and the intricate steps that led from diplomatic standoff to open warfare—steps that we can correctly identify this very day in the East Ukraine, Syria, South Sudan and many other African and Middle Eastern troublespots—will never prevent future bloodshed.

In order to address the underlying evil of war and conflict, we need to turn to another sort of remembrance altogether: the remembrance afforded by a commemoration often overshadowed by our national recollection. The ‘lest we forget’ that has shaped the Gospel of Saint Mark, on whose feast-day the ANZAC force landed at Gallipoli. An area not unknown to the evangelist Mark who very likely sailed through the Eastern Mediterranean alongside his cousin, Barnabas (Acts 15.39, Colossians 4.10).

Saint Mark’s ‘lest we forget’ is as strong an invitation to remembrance as that afforded by today’s ‘other’ day of remembrance. His ‘lest we forget’ is also shaped by death and sacrifice: the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, ‘giving his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10.45), the sacrifice of Jesus’ followers, many of whom ‘deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him’, and some of whom even ‘lose their lives for Christ’s sake, and the sake of the gospel’ (Mark 8.34-35). Mark’s ‘lest we forget’ is not about a passive act of remembrance, undertaken once a year and then often forgotten until the next instalment of news of wars and conflict reminds us of the frailty of the commitment to peace and reconciliation so many of us make each year on this day.

Mark’s ‘lest we forget’ is an active remembrance, an invitation to let our lives be transformed by our remembrance. His ‘lest we forget’ is the promise that, by our corporate remembrance, not only our communities but even our own bodies, will be reshaped, as we re-member—build up—the body of Christ as members of one another. And because the act of remembrance shown forth in Mark’s gospel is so visceral—people and communities reshaped as one body by their re-membering—we do hurt where others are hurting, we do hurt where parts of that body are injured, persecuted or rejected.

Mark’s ‘lest we forget’, then, is an invitation to turn our national remembrance with its rituals that give meaning for a few weeks each year only, into a way of life that enables us to live our lives every day of the year. At the heart of Mark’s way remembrance stands the insight Mark makes known in the very opening verse of his story of Jesus: that this story is about ‘Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God’ and that that is the reason why this story is ‘good news’ (Mark 1.1). The remaining fifteen chapters of his gospel serve to illustrate how it is that Jesus ‘from Nazareth in Galilee’ is in fact the Son of God, and the expected Messiah, and how we can join in remembering him, by ourselves becoming members of him, becoming his followers, his disciples.

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For Mark the story of Jesus is immediate and direct—not written to show how the life of Jesus would be a direct fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures like Matthew, not exhorting his readers to be open to the idea of a covenant for Jews as well as outsiders—gentiles and non-believers—like Luke, nor plunging into the depths of the mystery of the-Word-made-Flesh like John. Mark’s story is told rapdily, in staccato reporter-style: with every ‘and immediately’ or ‘and then’ adding evidence for his headline news, ‘the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God’.

Those who shape Jesus’ story—his family, the people of his hometown, even his disciples—never fully grasp the truth of Mark’s headline news: his family try and restrain him because they believed that ‘he is out of his mind’, the people of Nazareth ‘took offense at him’, and his disciples never quite understand how it can be that Jesus heals the sick, walks on water, and feeds the thousands: even though they are witnesses to these miraculous events they neither remember nor, as Jesus tells them, do they understand (Mark 3.20, 6.1, 8.18).

Even when viewed from the end of the story and the vantage point of the resurrection—at which point most of the protagonists know very well who Jesus is—even the Roman centurion confesses Jesus to be the ‘Son of God’ (Mark 15.39)—his disciples do not believe Mark’s headline news. They see the empty tomb—today’s gospel reading tells us—they hear God’s messengers and witnesses confirm what Jesus had prophesied, and nevertheless they do not believe.

In fact, the walk away from the news. The first witnesses ‘trembling and in astonishment, saying nothing to anyone’ (Mark 16.8), the second witness, Mary Magdalene, telling the news but not believed (Mark 16.10), the third set of witnesses encountered in the country—surely on the way to Emmaus, as also told in Luke’s Gospel—telling the news and not believed, either (Mark 10.13).

Mark’s gospel is the only gospel where the risen Lord ‘rebukes the disciples for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen’ (Mark 16.14). Until the very end of the story—even when they have all received the crucial information that will make sense of all their experiences—the disciples refuse to remember and understand.

This is what selective remembrance does, Mark tells us. This is what happens when we restrict the sentiment ‘lest we forget’—however strongly and genuinely felt at the time we make it—to one day only: whether ANZAC Day, or Easter Day. Today’s gospel assures us that disciples would have forgotten even the most powerful sign of all—the Lord of life breaking the bonds of death—because their remembrance was selective and passive: recalling only death where there were signs of new life, recalling only sadness at the tragedy that has been where there was astonishment at the encounter with the Risen One.

This ANZAC Day, let the watchword for our nation and our church be Mark’s, ‘Lest we forget’. Let us accept Mark’s rebuke for the times when we recalled only the tragedy of wasteful death, and not the miracle of life reshaped by those who continue to work for peace and reconciliation when the cameras have long moved on. Let us accept Mark’s rebuke for the times when we have simply walked away, having either failed to observe or to believe the signs of lives transformed in our nation and communities.

Instead, let us remember purposefully and actively. Mark’s ‘lest we forget’ is encouragement for me at St Paul’s actively to remember the plight of migrants and refugees who fled the conflicts that make, or used to make, our television news by offering them a welcome, a listening ear; and the opportunity to learn more about this land, its people and its language. It is the same ‘lest we forget’ that motivates our welcome to 400,000 visitors and pilgrims who come here every year, and our ambition seeking to provide a home for all Anglicans—whatever their background—to find a place where they can come to experience Mark’s headline news: ‘the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God’.

Mark’s good news concludes with the conviction that his headline news will be made known everywhere by people who actively remember and re-member: who both recall the transforming life of the resurrection, and seek to build up the resurrection body of Christ on earth in the ways they shape and sustain their communities. Mark’s good news is good news for today, because he assures us that when we live out his ‘lest we forget’ by our active remembrance, ‘the Lord will work with us, confirming this news by accompanying signs’. The signs of resurrection in our midst, that will enable us together to show forth ways that lead out of conflict, hatred and even warfare. The signs that confirm Mark’s good news and which, if we keep on remembering, may even turn our national commemoration of conflicts past into a celebration of future hope: Lest we forget that the Lord is risen indeed, alleluia.

© Andreas Loewe, 2015.

The light to lighten all nations: ‘an obstacle in its original place’

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne on the 145^th Anniversary of the Foundation of St Philip’s Church Cowes, Phillip Island, 1 February 2015, the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple:

On Monday, 25 February 1935, the Melbourne Argus reported: ‘Cowes Church Hall Dedicated – Vicar mixed the Concrete – Fate of the Archbishop’s doorstep’ (The Argus, Monday 25 February 1935, p. 3). Completed to mark the sixty-fifth anniversary-year of your church, your church hall was a labour of love: volunteers dug the foundations, your then vicar, the Revd William McAully Robertson, drew the plans and mixed the concrete, and the seventh Dean of Melbourne and Archbishop, Frederick Waldegrave Head, laid the doorstep, as the works commenced.

It was the Archbishop’s doorstep that proved to be both ‘the stone that the builders rejected’ (Matthew 21.42) and a ‘stumbling block to many’ (1 Corinthians 1.23) – quite literally: as the Hall was dedicated, the vicar confessed that the stone the Archbishop had laid as an entrance stone now supported the kitchen sink: ‘it had proved to be an obstacle in its original place’, the vicar explained.

Our lessons today (Malachi 3:1-4,Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40) remind us that our faith is not always a bright ‘light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to God’s people’, but that it sometimes can be a stumbling block, can be ‘a sign that will be opposed’, as our Gospel reading puts it (Luke 2.32, 34). They encourage us to place our hope in the One who was rejected by many, Jesus Christ, and to become ambassadors of that hope. And they give us the example of two faithful people, Simeon and Anna, as signs of that longing, and proclamation.

‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace’, Simeon prays holding the infant Jesus in his arms, we heard in our Gospel reading (Luke 2.19). Simeon has become old while waiting for the promised Saviour. Now he can contentedly take his leave, in the certain knowledge that the Saviour has come among his people. Simeon, we read in our Gospel reading, was looking forward to ‘the consolation of Israel’ Luke 2.25). The commentators tell us that this term was used to describe the coming of the Messiah, picking up the prophet Isaiah’s rallying cry to the exiled people of God in Babylon: ‘Comfort, comfort, my people’ (Isaiah 40.1). Simeon had spent a lifetime longing for that promised hope. Now at last salvation is at hand, not only for his own people, but for all nations who seek to share in the hope of the Messiah. Now, at last, he can go home to God, can ‘depart in peace’.

If I have suggested an image of Simeon as a fully contented man with a message that brings nothing but comfort then, I am afraid, I have only described one side of the man. For Simeon knew well about how faith, like your erstwhile Church Hall doorstep, can be a stumbling block; how its challenging message may give offence, can feel like ‘an obstacle in its original place’. His prophetic words, addressed to Mary and Joseph, then, temper his own consolation and desire to depart in peace, with a distinctive shadow of darkness.

Where the prophets foretold how God would set free his people by an act of power—a physical act of liberation—Simeon foresees an altogether different fate for Israel: not so much a sunlit highway for the Lord, prepared by his faithful messenger, but rather more a valley of the shadow of death. The end may yet be glorious, but the path there will be a Via Dolorosa, a way of suffering and a crown of thorns. The doom of Israel is foretold in this Infant, born to be a crucified King. While Simeon speaks of light and glory, he also points to ‘the time of cords and scourges and lamentation’.

‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel’, Simeon proclaims as he blessed Mary and Joseph (Luke 2.34). The first stumbling block for Simeon’s contemporaries surely is that the ‘many’ in Israel are both the chosen people as well as the ‘nations’, the gentiles, whom the child in the prophet’s arms will call to the radiant light of God’s goodness. If the prophet’s words that infant’s life is inextricably tied up with the fate of nations and people are unsettling, feel like ‘an obstacle in its original place’, then his blessing for the child’s mother is even less comforting: the lance, thrust into her Son’s lifeless side on Calvary, will be as if a sword would pierce her soul, too.

Simeon’s prophecy is mirrored in our reading from the epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2.14-18). There the promised Messiah, whom we today see presented to the Lord as an infant, is shown to be the last High Priest of Israel who, will sacrifice himself for our sake: ‘so that through death he might … free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death’ (Hebrews 2.14-5). The destiny of Mary’s child’s, today’s epistle reading makes clear, is to be the final offering to be sacrificed in the Temple, the ‘sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people’ as well as to be the last, the ‘merciful and faithful, high priest in the service of God’ (Hebrews 2.17).

Jesus’ offering in the temple—both as an infant in Simeon’s arms, and as the last High Priest of Israel on the cross—initiates a new relationship with God, today’s festival makes clear. The stumbling blocks of Simeon’s prophecy lie not only in naming the child in his arms as the promised Messiah, but by proclaiming, in the sacred precincts of the Jerusalem Temple, that here was the final High Priest who would do away with sacrifices for sin forever, the One who would open the Temple to all nations in order to be ‘the light to lighten the gentiles’ (Luke 2.32); words that surely would have been offensive to any believing Temple worshipper, would have been an ‘obstacle in its original place’.

In the midst of the Temple, as Jesus is presented to the Lord, Simeon prophecies that the Temple’s very purpose will come to an end: the child himself will be the ‘sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people’ our epistle speaks about (Hebrews 2.17). And indeed, the epistle to the Hebrew reminds us later that, at the moment the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the precincts of the Jerusalem Temple was torn in two, at the moment at which Jesus dies on the cross, the relationship between God and his people had been fundamentally redefined.

Here, then, is not only a firstborn infant come to be dedicated to God, but a rightful High Priest who takes his place in the Temple; a self-understanding that Jesus himself shares from the beginning when he tells his worried parents a few verses after this morning’s Gospel reading, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know I had to be in my Father’s house?’ (Luke 2.49). The prophecy that the child presented by Simeon was a High Priest would have been startling enough. The fact that, in the midst of the Temple, he is proclaimed Messiah to the gentiles, who will provide his own sacrifice in his own body on a cross, and that by offering himself will do away with the need for sin offerings, with the need for a Temple altogether, is what makes Simeon’s prophecy so offensive, such a stumbling block to the faithful.

All is changed as the infant is presented in the Temple. The very reason for faith is radically redefined by Simeon’s prophecy: that here is the One who will, by his own offering of himself on the darkest of all days, Good Friday, put an end to the darkness of sin and the darkness of the valley of the shadow of death altogether. That here is the One, who by his glorious resurrection on Easter Day, will in his own risen body show forth the light of new hope, of sins forgiven and lives restored—the light of eternal life—to all those who trust the words of Simeon, that the infant in his arms is indeed, ‘your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples. A light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel’ (Luke 2.30-32).

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As we give thanks for 145 years of faithful witness in this place, I invite you to hear again the words of Simeon’s song and discern through them God’s radical work of transformation among his people throughout the ages: a work that turns our preconceptions upside down; a work that transforms people and communities; a work that seeks to shed forth the radiant light of resurrection into the dark places of our world where people long for assurance and hope.

As we give thanks for the past, I pray that may God richly bless you in your future ministry: may your future show forth the same unity of spirit and action that led to the creation of your church and hall—where priest and people created together the place and shape of your ministry.And may your future be characterised by the same imagination and perseverance that, when faced with a stumbling block doorstep, saw in it not a ‘stone to be rejected’ but a foundation for a new, and essential kitchen, and a new function and ministry altogether.

And so, as we approach this crossroads of the church’s year, as Lent draws near, as our gaze shifts from the miracle of the manger to the triumph over the tomb, it is my prayer for you and me, that God will continue to touch our lives, so that we may become people who know in our own lives the mystery that those who come share the Infant’s bonds and burial, shall also be made partakers of his resurrection, and make that message known in our own generation, to all who long for the ‘light to lighten the nations’ today. Amen.

St Philip’s Cowes Photography: nipper30

Transform the future: care for one another as God cares for you

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 7 September 2014:

This morning’s lessons remind us of God’s care for us, and urge us to extend the same care to others. They tell us that God’s care is for the whole person—God keeps us safe in body and soul—and assure us that God gives us a home with him forever. Not only that: they tell us that God rejoices in bringing home people who have wandered away or are lost. And because God rejoices in bringing people home, we, too are to reach out both to those who still seek after God, as well as look out for those who have already found him and have committed themselves to God’s care.

Our first lesson, from the book of the Exodus (Exodus 12.1-14), takes us to the beginning of the story of God and his chosen people. This is the moment at which the people are set free from slavery in a foreign land and made God’s own. The beginning of a long journey with their God during which God reveals himself to his people as their Sovereign Lord, and caring protector. God will walk with his people through their long desert journey, and will guide them to freedom in a land that he shall give them. And at the beginning of that journey stands the final, dramatic act of liberation from the powers of Egypt: the judgment of the gods of Egypt by the Passover of God’s Angel of Death.

So significant is this beginning of the journey of God with his people, that ‘this day shall be a day of remembrance for you’, our reading tells: ‘You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it’ (Exodus 12.14). Those who experienced the hurried meal, ‘your loins girded, with sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand’, those who ate and made ready to leave the country of their oppressors to escape from their slavery, were charged to share this extraordinary experience with the generations that came after them (Exodus 12.11). The lamb eaten in travelling clothes, with their belongings packed and their walking staff at hand. The blood sprinkled onto their homes as a sign of God’s presence and of their belonging to God. All this was to become a living memory, a memorial to be enacted in every generation ‘as a perpetual ordinance’ (Exodus 12.14).

Those who were to join the journey with God at a later stage would also eat the hurried meal, share the unleavened bread and thereby recall God’s presence and his promise: that God would judge the institutions that continued to hold people enthralled; that he would tear down the idols that still made people slaves; that he would be present with his people in abject hardship, would be there in their oppression. That he would be with his people and that ‘no plague shall destroy you’ (Exodus 12.13). So important was this beginning of the people’s journey with their God to the home he promised them, that the Day of Passover became the beginning of a new era: ‘this month shall mark the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you’ (Exodus 12.2). A New Year, a new time: to mark the beginning of the journey to the home God promises his people.

For generations the people of God remembered his promise and his action in destroying the structures that enslave. Until, at the beginning of another age, the turning of time when God’s avenging Angel of Wrath gave way to God’s Angel of Peace—at the moment the birth of his Son was made known to frightened shepherds holding watch over their flock at night; at the beginning of another time in the land that had seen much promise and was to be a home for God’s people, but had become a land of oppression and fear; at the beginning of a new journey, God once more spoke to his people through his Son. In our reading from the Gospel according to St Matthew (Matthew 18.10-20), it is God’s Son who speaks to all those who will listen, reminds them of the promise of old: the promise of the new time, the promise of the new journey. The promise that God will remain with his people in spite of their waywardness; that God seeks to bring his people home, even though the land to which he had taken them had once more become a place of oppression and servitude.

God is so close to his people that it is as if he beheld them face to face. Even though we may not always feel that we stand in his presence, our reading tells us that ‘in heaven our angels continually see the face of Christ’s Father in heaven’ (Matthew 18.10). We are continually represented before God, are continually present to him. Just as in the coming among us of his Son Jesus Christ a part of God is permanently among us humans, so in the place to which God calls us, in the heavenly home to which the journey begun at the ‘beginning of all months’ will ultimately lead, we permanently are represented before him. Again, as in our first lesson, it is angels—divine messengers—that span the distance between the eternal God and his people on earth: our ‘angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven’, Jesus tells (Matthew 18.10). Just as the angels behold God in heaven, so God beholds us and cares for us. Each of his people—each one of us—is present before him.

The act of making his people present before God starts with the sacrifice begun in our first lesson: the shedding of the blood of an unblemished lamb, and the sprinkling of that blood on the homes of God’s people as a sign of their commitment, their confidence in the protection of their God. ‘The blood shall be a sign to you on the houses where you live’, our first reading tells, just as the blood is a sign for God: ‘when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you’ (Exodus 12.13). The sprinkled blood of the sacrificial lamb identifies each home as a dwelling of a person who trusts God, and who, in turn, is known and identified by God.

Our gospel reading affirms that what is true for our temporal homes also holds true for the eternal home that God has prepared for the people committed to him. Those who share in the paschal sacrifice completed by God’s own Lamb, the sacrifice wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, also share the marks of that sacrifice. Indeed, they do not only share the marks of sacrifice, but share its benefits: like Christ, they may call on God as their Father. And like Christ who, following his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, continually beholds the face of his Father in heaven, they too—we too—are represented before God in heaven. For in Christ our humanity is ever before God.

No wonder, then, that God cares for his people and wants to seek out those who are lost, or know him not. The sacrifice at the beginning of the new time as the Angel of Death swept away the deities of Egypt and revealed them as idols, and the completion of that sacrifice, as the conqueror of Death swept away death, by dying once and for all on a cross, surely are the ultimate signs of God’s care for his people: God has come among us; and we stand before God, may call on him as our Father; confident that he cares for us, knows us for who we are here on earth, and beholds us as we can be in heaven.

Our readings assure us that God knows full well that we—his people—can err and stray from our ways like lost sheep. Our Gospel reading tells us that God is like a good shepherd who cares so much for his flock that he will seek out the lost (Matthew 18.12). But at the same time, even though God knows us to be flawed and fallible, he also knows who we can be, for our ‘angels continually see the face of the Father in heaven’ (Matthew 18.10).

In the same way, our readings tells us that God knows full well that the land in which we dwell—the good and pleasant land of his promise—and the structures we choose for ourselves, or which are imposed on us, are often likely to be flawed. Our second reading from the letter to the Romans (Romans 13.1-10), with its reflection on good use of authority makes that abundantly clear. Yet even though our structures are often fallible and can fail, God knows them for what they can be: he sets before us a home in heaven in the certain expectation that one day God’s will be done on earth as well as in heaven.

God knows both our potential—as individuals and as a society as a whole—and our shortcomings and flaws. And even though he knows us as we are, he promises to care for us; promises to walk with us and to seek us out again and again. In return, he expects us to remember him by celebrating his saving acts again and again ‘as a festival to the Lord’, recalling the sacrifice of the paschal lamb each day in our celebration of the meal Jesus gave his disciples. God expects us to walk with him in the confidence he promises, strengthened by the tokens of his abiding presence with us.

And in return for his care of seeking out the lost with joy, and not in judgement, God expects us to extend the same care that he affords us to others. The essence of God’s expectations of us is summed up in our epistle: ‘owe no one anything’, Paul reminds the Roman congregation, ‘except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law’ (Romans 13.8). Love one another just as God loves us. Care for one another, just as God cares for us. Pray for one another, just as God receives and hears our prayers. Remain with one another, just as God remains with us.

Do all this in the knowledge that by doing so, the signs of our home in heaven may be shown forth here on earth, and may help transform our flawed structures, and our frail humanity, to conform to our image and pattern in heaven on which God gazes in love day by day. Do all this together, gathered as people of faith, in the knowledge and assurance that ‘where two or three are gathered together in my name, God is among us’, to aid us in this work of transformation (Matthew 18.20).

‘Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen’ (Ephesians 3.20-21).

Love good, shun evil, transform the world around you

A sermon preached by the Dean of Melbourne, the Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe, at St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne on the Sixth Sunday of Easter, 25 May 2014:

This morning’s lessons (1 Peter 3.8-22, John 14.15-21) invite us to live by the principle that lies at the heart of the Trinity—the principle of the love Christ has for his Father; the love that flows from both the Father and the Son: the love of the Holy Spirit. They give us powerful insights into how this principle of sacrificial love was lived out in times of persecution and great insecurity about the future of the Christian church. They encourage us to believe that, whatever external circumstances we may face—whether we are buoyed up in times of growth and strength, or weighed down in times of hardship and persecution—‘those who love Christ will be loved by the Father’, and that Christ ‘will love them and reveal himself to them’ (John 18.21). Finally, they invite us to share ourselves in the work of transformational living—living so that others may be brought to the love we know and believe in—through our giving and our living.

Our epistle reading from the first letter of Peter (1 Peter 3.8-22) was written in the second half of the first Christian century, a time of incredible uncertainty and hardship for the early Christian communities of the Roman Empire. During the brutal reign of emperor Nero, Christians and Jews were routinely persecuted: it was Nero who put the apostles Peter and Paul to death and, with them, innumerable Christians in Rome. In his Annals, Tacitus, one of the greatest first-century historians, suggests that Nero’s persecution of Christians was an elaborate cover up for the infamous burning of Rome (Annals, XV, 44).Written in the smouldering ashes of Rome and with the memory of the first generation of Christian martyrs very much alive, our epistle speaks a message of peace and love into a world full of uncertainty and hostile to people of faith.

The congregations to whom our epistle was addressed are called to live by the way of love, not share the hatred of their oppressors. They are invited to remain united in face of danger, to share in one another’s sufferings, support one another in hardship and difficulty. They are encouraged to ‘have sympathy’; now the Greek word sumpatheis really means ‘share in someone’s feelings’ rather than warm to someone: ‘rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’ is how the apostle Paul put it in his epistle to the Romans (Romans 12.15). When faced with the persecutions of their Roman overlords, the early Christians were encouraged to bury their differences, to look out for one another and to share in the love that characterised their faith. As Jesus had said at the table of the Last Supper, only a few verses before today’s Gospel reading commences, ‘by this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’ (John 13.35).

Love, for the writers of our epistle and our Gospel readings, was not just a warm feeling in the heart, or the creation of a deep emotional bond. In the first Christian century to love someone meant first of all to act with righteousness towards them; to treat them as one would expect to be treated oneself. And from this first principle flow a number of important instructions to the Christian community that go beyond the principle of love, of ‘having a tender heart and a humble mind’, as first Peter puts it (1 Peter 3.8). Faced with the ruthless and organised persecution of Christians in the capital and provinces of the Roman empire, our epistle challenges us to love even those who persecute us: ‘Do not repay evil with evil, or abuse for abuse; but on the contrary, repay with a blessing’ (1 Peter 3.9). It is hard to bless those that insult you, let alone bless those that seek after your life. Yet this is what the first epistle of Peter instructs the persecuted Christian community to do: ‘do not repay evil with evil, but repay with a blessing’ (1 Peter 3.8).

Evil that is countered with evil, the writer of our epistle knew, only creates further evil: the cycle of violence and hatred can only be broken where people have an absolute passion for goodness, an utter lack of provocation. Refusal to retaliate where others accuse unjustly, the writer of our epistle tells us, can break the cycle of escalating conflict. Where people return evil for the evil they have received, they only stoke the flames of conflict. ‘Repay instead with a blessing’, first Peter encourages us, ‘because it is for this that you were called: that you, too, might inherit a blessing, might inherit salvation’ (1 Peter 3.9). Those who live by the way of love will receive blessing and salvation, our Gospel reading echoes first Peter. In fact, those who shun the way of breaking evil by love, our Gospel reading suggests, may never know this love-filled way of life, nor the Spirit of God that makes known this life: ‘the world cannot receive this Spirit of truth, because it neither sees nor knows him’ (John 14.17). Rather, it is those who live lives that counter evil with good, hatred with love, who know God and will be known as his children. Who will be sustained by God’s strength to undertake their work of building up and transforming the Christian church: ‘you know the Spirit of truth’, our Gospel reading tells, ‘because he abides with you, and he will be in you’ (John 14.17).

In setting before us the way of transformational living by sharing in God’s love, our readings also make an important distinction about suffering persecution. While there will without a doubt be many who are called to suffer for their belief in Jesus Christ, not all are called to suffer persecution: ‘if it should be God’s will for you to suffer’, our epistle reminds us, ‘it is better to suffer for doing good than to suffer for doing evil’ (1 Peter 3.17). Though there will be some among us present here who have suffered persecution for their faith—I am thinking in particular of those who had to flee their homelands to escape the kind of persecution our epistle speaks of—for many of us the sacrifices we may be called to bring for our faith may not be through physical suffering. Not all will suffer persecution, our epistle assures us, yet all are called to shun evil and do good; all are encouraged to work for goodness and peace in their own generation. We all are called to contribute, through whatever means we may be able to do so—by offering of ourselves, our talents and our gifts, our finances (and yes, in the case of some, even by facing persecution and hardship because of the hope that lies in us)—to bringing about the vision of transformational living our readings speak about.

At St Paul’s Cathedral we have made the way of life that today’s readings speak of our Cathedral vision. Our Chapter and Cathedral team believe that together all of us can help transform our city and diocese. In the conversations that the Precentor and I have been conducting with our congregations over the past weeks, it is clear that many of our members share our vision. The transformation that our Cathedral vision upholds is both an inner, spiritual transformation, and an exterior physical transformation—as in the case of the physical reshaping of our office facilities and meetings rooms over the next few months, in order to ensure that our ministry is well-resourced for future generations. This work of transformation will not come without effort or even sacrifice; indeed, in the case of our refurbishment project it will create much physical upheaval, and a significant financial burden, that relies on the generous response of many to carry. But we undertake this, and other work, encouraged by certainty contained in today’s readings: the insight that where we all join together in the work of transformation, others will be able recognise the hope that lies at the heart of our faith, and come to share in our work of ministry.

By sharing the Good News of the life-transforming, world-changing death and resurrection of Jesus, this world truly may be changed for good, our readings tell. They also affirm that this message is not only for the first generation of Christians but for all time and all places, including our own generation and this land. Through the grace of God and the gifts, talents and vocations of each one of us, each one of us is indeed enabled to show forth the transformational love of Christ: in our congregations, and our city and diocese. Today’s readings invite to commit ourselves once more to Christ’s way of transformational living. They invite us to show forth in practical ways that we truly believe in our hearts what we profess: that by our sharing in Christ’s ministry of love, that by our bearing fruit that will last in his name, others will know that we truly are Christ’s disciples, and will themselves come to know and love the One who first loved us and called us his friends (John 15.16, 13.35).

‘Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen’ (Ephesians 3.20).