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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by Canon Mark Bonney, Treasurer on Sunday 27 December 2009
"27 DECEMBER 2009"
“We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands…” (1 John 1:1)
Christianity is the most materialistic of all the religions. I’m not for one minute condoning the excesses of a materialistic society – much of which we will have all indulged in over the past few days – but Christianity is a materialistic religion because it takes the material world seriously as the way that God makes himself known to us: today we celebrate St John the Evangelist who proclaimed in the Christmas Gospel “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” – St John who we heard in our first reading say “we declare to you what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands”.
It is the most extraordinary claim and down the centuries we Christian people have struggled to get to grips with the materialistic earthiness of St John’s proclamation.
It’s worth recalling for a moment the situation into which John’s gospel was probably written. Christianity was initially a movement within Judaism – but after the fall of Jerusalem in AD70 a significant blow was dealt to the centrality of Jewishness to the Christian religion. Without the Jerusalem ‘anchor’ as it were, gentile Christianity – on the increase since St Paul – began to grow apart from the Jewishness that had spawned it. There were frequent accusations from gentile Christians that the fall of Jerusalem was God’s punishment on the Jews for their rejection of Jesus. And Jews felt threatened.
In times of high anxiety and stress, religious systems always seem to narrow their focus and become rigidly orthodox – the various fundamentalist groups of our own time witness to this, be it fundamentalist Evangelicals against their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, or fundamentalist Muslims –against liberal democracy: it happens now and it happened with Judaism in the first century. With the Temple razed to the ground save for the wailing wall, devotion to the Law, the Torah was all that Jews had left that identified them with the past – it’s what held them together and as the screws of Jewish orthodoxy were being tightened the gospel of John made its appeal to those Jews who were torn between their faith in Jesus and their deep emotional desire not to leave Judaism – so in John’s gospel we have a heavy emphasis on Jesus as the Way the Truth and the Life, Jesus as the Temple not made with hands, as the one who would be with those expelled from the synagogue.
It’s important to recall this background for two reasons – firstly because it explains the fact that the gospel so often talks of ‘the Jews’ in a disparaging way – and unfortunately in Christian history this has been the source of an anti-Semitism and bigotry that is a blot on Christian history and which I certainly don’t want to repeat: secondly it explains the earthy materialism of those words “what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” In the midst of religious controversy the Gospel of John was making bold claims – that in Jesus you know the Father – to be called into the life of this Christ was to be called into the very being of God.
And for the Evangelist who we celebrate today this being called into the life of God is about life now –not just sometime in the future – but a fullness of life now – and then into eternity. It’s a life that’s affirming, it’s not a rule based moral code – it’s about life in all its fullness – being the people God has created us to be.
In order get our heads around things we often put them into compartments and divide them up - physical/spiritual, public/private, this worldly/other worldly, politics/church – we can perhaps control things a little better if we do that: but the God of John the Evangelist doesn’t allow us to do that – there are no bits that can be kept out of his way – in him here is no darkness at all, and all things must come into his light – the very beginning of his gospel claims that “without him not one thing came into being” – all that is owes its origin to the Word made flesh.
The materialistic nature of Christianity means that the everyday, the routine the ordinary are where it all happens – the great discourses of John’s gospel are about fundamental things, bread, sight, life, water……. At the heart of this and every Eucharistic is the simple materialism of bread and wine – vehicles for the divine. At the heart of our celebration of Christmas is a newborn baby –a vehicle for the divine – in him was the light – the light that enlightens everyone.
Our gospel reading ended this morning with words that I find somehow haunting “there are also so many other things that Jesus did; if everyone of them were written down I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” – they are words that speak to me, not of a myriad of things that happened in the past that simply haven’t been recorded, but of things that continue to happen now – the light that is Christ, the light that enlightens everyone is the light of Christ that is in each and everyone of us – and the story of Jesus that the gospel writer proclaims is proclaimed and told in the lives of you and me.
At this altar we see with our eyes and touch with our hands the Bread of Life… we encounter the materialistic heart of the Christian faith and we are sent out to live life in all its fullness, and to get others to do the same, and all to the glory of the one and only living God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Christianity is the most materialistic of all the religions. I’m not for one minute condoning the excesses of a materialistic society – much of which we will have all indulged in over the past few days – but Christianity is a materialistic religion because it takes the material world seriously as the way that God makes himself known to us: today we celebrate St John the Evangelist who proclaimed in the Christmas Gospel “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” – St John who we heard in our first reading say “we declare to you what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands”.
It is the most extraordinary claim and down the centuries we Christian people have struggled to get to grips with the materialistic earthiness of St John’s proclamation.
It’s worth recalling for a moment the situation into which John’s gospel was probably written. Christianity was initially a movement within Judaism – but after the fall of Jerusalem in AD70 a significant blow was dealt to the centrality of Jewishness to the Christian religion. Without the Jerusalem ‘anchor’ as it were, gentile Christianity – on the increase since St Paul – began to grow apart from the Jewishness that had spawned it. There were frequent accusations from gentile Christians that the fall of Jerusalem was God’s punishment on the Jews for their rejection of Jesus. And Jews felt threatened.
In times of high anxiety and stress, religious systems always seem to narrow their focus and become rigidly orthodox – the various fundamentalist groups of our own time witness to this, be it fundamentalist Evangelicals against their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, or fundamentalist Muslims –against liberal democracy: it happens now and it happened with Judaism in the first century. With the Temple razed to the ground save for the wailing wall, devotion to the Law, the Torah was all that Jews had left that identified them with the past – it’s what held them together and as the screws of Jewish orthodoxy were being tightened the gospel of John made its appeal to those Jews who were torn between their faith in Jesus and their deep emotional desire not to leave Judaism – so in John’s gospel we have a heavy emphasis on Jesus as the Way the Truth and the Life, Jesus as the Temple not made with hands, as the one who would be with those expelled from the synagogue.
It’s important to recall this background for two reasons – firstly because it explains the fact that the gospel so often talks of ‘the Jews’ in a disparaging way – and unfortunately in Christian history this has been the source of an anti-Semitism and bigotry that is a blot on Christian history and which I certainly don’t want to repeat: secondly it explains the earthy materialism of those words “what we have looked at and touched with our hands.” In the midst of religious controversy the Gospel of John was making bold claims – that in Jesus you know the Father – to be called into the life of this Christ was to be called into the very being of God.
And for the Evangelist who we celebrate today this being called into the life of God is about life now –not just sometime in the future – but a fullness of life now – and then into eternity. It’s a life that’s affirming, it’s not a rule based moral code – it’s about life in all its fullness – being the people God has created us to be.
In order get our heads around things we often put them into compartments and divide them up - physical/spiritual, public/private, this worldly/other worldly, politics/church – we can perhaps control things a little better if we do that: but the God of John the Evangelist doesn’t allow us to do that – there are no bits that can be kept out of his way – in him here is no darkness at all, and all things must come into his light – the very beginning of his gospel claims that “without him not one thing came into being” – all that is owes its origin to the Word made flesh.
The materialistic nature of Christianity means that the everyday, the routine the ordinary are where it all happens – the great discourses of John’s gospel are about fundamental things, bread, sight, life, water……. At the heart of this and every Eucharistic is the simple materialism of bread and wine – vehicles for the divine. At the heart of our celebration of Christmas is a newborn baby –a vehicle for the divine – in him was the light – the light that enlightens everyone.
Our gospel reading ended this morning with words that I find somehow haunting “there are also so many other things that Jesus did; if everyone of them were written down I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” – they are words that speak to me, not of a myriad of things that happened in the past that simply haven’t been recorded, but of things that continue to happen now – the light that is Christ, the light that enlightens everyone is the light of Christ that is in each and everyone of us – and the story of Jesus that the gospel writer proclaims is proclaimed and told in the lives of you and me.
At this altar we see with our eyes and touch with our hands the Bread of Life… we encounter the materialistic heart of the Christian faith and we are sent out to live life in all its fullness, and to get others to do the same, and all to the glory of the one and only living God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.