Sermon for Hinde Street Methodist Church Sunday 29 th October 2017 11am Psalm 110 Matthew 22:34-45 Last weekend I was watching a German film with subtitles, when I was struck by an incident that s stayed with me, as I ve reflected on today s Gospel. It begins, when Martin Luther receives a message from the mother superior of St Mary s monastery near Wittenberg, asking him to come quickly. When he arrives, she says the preacher is speaking in German, and he must be stopped. They go into the church and Luther says he s reading from John. She replies, Latin is the language of the church, not German. A few moments later, Thomas Muntzer invites the congregation, to sing in the language with which our Mother s taught us to sing. He begins alone. After a few lines, Luther joins in, then the nuns and the local people standing behind them. The mother superior tries to stop it. But the singing continues as she removes the Nuns. And the joyful hymn continues as Luther, Muntzer and another friend leave the monastery. The film is called Reformation and it s still on BBC iplayer. I think it s worth it, because despite the violence, and the way it both exaggerates and simplifies the events that sparked the Reformation, this incident led me to wonder about the nature of our worship. For the worship we choose to share in, doesn t only expresses our convictions about God, it also shapes the way we embody those convictions in our lives and the way we engage with the church and wider society. Eugene Boring suggests that worship is a kind of theological debate with the culture. Any group who dares to sing, Praise God, from who, all blessings flow he says, is engaging in a strenuous argument with a culture that sings Praise the celebrities and the powerful and the rich, from whom everything the rest of us is after flows. And that brings me to the Gospel. Today s Gospel, continues Jesus dispute in the temple with the religious authorities, and concludes it. It s the Tuesday before his death. After entering Jerusalem, the day before, he cleansed the temple and then left the city. In the morning, he came back and was preaching to the crowds, when the chief priests and the elders of the people question him about his authority. Their question is followed by three parables told by Jesus against the religious leaders and three questions asked by a variety of the religious and political leaders. The section ends with the question Jesus asks the Pharisees in the second part of today s reading. This context matters, because the writer-editor of Matthew s Gospel has carefully constructed this section to relate to events happening in his community, 40 or 50 years after Jesus death. At that time, those who followed Christ were being thrown out of the synagogues, because their beliefs about Jesus went beyond the limits of acceptable diversity, within the Jewish community. Some were persecuted. And others were forced to choose between their families and their faith. For people living in this conflict-ridden situation, it was important that they knew Jesus had won his dispute with the religious and political leaders, before his trial. That his arguments, that his way, was triumphant. And that s given clarity in the encounter in the second part of today s reading. It balances the question about his authority that started the dispute. Then, Jesus refused to answer their question, because they wouldn t answer him. Now, he asks another question which they can t answer without recognising who he is, so they walk away. From now on, having silenced all of his opponents the chief priests, the elders of the people, the Pharisees, Sadducees and
Herodians he speaks only to his disciples and the crowds, until his trial. The dispute ends. Jesus has won. But what was it, about his final question, that silenced them? And why did it matter so much to Matthew s community? This is what Jesus asked them. What do you think of the Messiah [which also means the Christ]? Whose son is he? For the 1 st century Jewish community, to be someone s son, wasn t so much about biology or lineage, but about the one they belong to, the one we follow. The Pharisees answer - The son of David - isn t surprising. They can all agree, because Son of David was a synonym for the Messiah, the Christ, for the Jews as well as the Christians. But the writer-editor of Matthew s Gospel wants to claim more. So, right from the beginning of his Gospel, he uses a genealogy and a birth story, to show Jesus as the Son of David, and at the same time, transforms its meaning from the militaristic saviour who conquers by violence, to the humble king who heals. Of course, the religious leaders don t agree, neither in his time nor in Matthew s, so he returns to it at the beginning of his Holy Week to tidy up the matter. And in order to drive the point home, he changes the rhetorical question asked by Jesus in Mark s Gospel, into an exegetical question to the people who claim to be teachers of God s people. How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son? The psalm he quotes is Psalm 110. A psalm that s quoted 37 times in the New Testament, because it provided the evidence the early church needed, to support their conviction that Jesus, was the Son of David. In it David, the presumed divinely inspired author of the psalm, speaks of God as the first Lord. And the king in David s line who was installed on the throne by God as the second lord. So, the question is how David, the writer of the psalm, could by divine inspiration address the Messiah as his Lord, if the Messiah was also his son. The Pharisees can t answer, unless they are willing to say that Jesus is Messiah, and they re not! For Matthew s community, this shows them up as inadequate interpreters of scripture, in contrast to their teachers who have provided evidence throughout the Gospel that Jesus is both Lord and Son of David. But of course, that only makes sense if you believe that Jesus is the one we belong to, the one we follow. At the heart of this question is the question of who, the community Matthew was writing for, should worship. Who should claim their allegiance? The Pharisees who leave without answering Jesus question? Or their teachers who are convinced that Psalm 110 provides the evidence that he is the long-promised Messiah? For if he was, they could shape their lives by that conviction, leave the synagogue, separate from their families and even risk persecution. And just in case they re not sure what that life would look like, the answer is provided, just a few verses before. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. In other words, it s what they ve always believed and done, but now they ve seen and known Emmanuel, God with us, in Jesus. Eugene Boring wonders what it must have been like for the early church, to hear the psalm cherished in worship, coming from Jesus lips in a theological argument. He suggests it d be like watching a political debate and hearing one of the candidates suddenly say, When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride. It d be disorientating and completely out of place. And yet, they d have immediately understood that the language of worship was intimately
connected with their lives. For if what we say, or what we sing in worship, truly expresses our beliefs and convictions, it should be shaping and re-shaping our lives every day and every week. On 31 st October 1517, Martin Luther is reputed to have nailed 95 Theses to the door of All Saints Church, in Wittenberg. The church door acted as a bulletin board for announcements relating to academic and church affairs, and it was in this context, that Luther called for a disputation on the power and efficacy of indulgences out of love and zeal for truth and the desire to bring it to light. It probably doesn t matter too much that this account of the events is questioned, and that before the Theses were posted on the door, Luther had sent a letter with them to his archbishop. Their title - Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences - and the fact that they were in Latin suggests Luther didn t initially intend them for wider public consumption. But after they d been translated into German, in January 2018, they gained as wider audience. Within two weeks they d spread throughout Germany. By the end of March across Europe. The 95 Theses were about three broad issues. Selling forgiveness via indulgences to build a cathedral. The Pope s power to forgive. And the damage indulgences caused to ordinary Christians. His concern was pastoral, but it was rooted in his own struggle, with salvation and assurance. We opften forget that Luther s ideas weren t only his and he didn t write the Theses alone. He shared them with a whole variety of religious and political reformers. Some, he supported, others he did not. But within fifteen years, their ideas had led to wholesale change in the life of the church, and of the way worship was conducted. It included a translation of the bible into German, a new form of service in German and a variety of new hymns, some using folk tunes. And accompanying these, a new catechism, for teaching the basics of the faith. Needed, because as people engaged in worship in ways that had never been possible before, they began to ask questions that wanted answers. The main focus of the 500 th anniversary of the Reformation isn t its effect on worship. But it was in worship, that the ordinary people experienced it, so it was through worship that its impact was sustained. Worship has a powerful influence on how Christians live life. Methodists know that. We often say we sing our theology. And that s why we remember it. But now that we live in a time when the majority of the world s people hear the scriptures, sing hymns and pray in their mother tongue, I m not sure whether we re aware of the profound impact that no longer worshipping in Latin or from the language of colonial masters, had on people s understanding of the Gospel, or the way they engaged with the church and society. In 1517, Thomas Muntzer was originally one of the Luther s followers, but inspired by the prophets he preached about God s justice and led peasants in western and southern Germany to demand rights and freedom, from oppressive nobles and landlords. Similarly, when Christians in Latin America started reading the bible and praying together, they began to asks questions about their poverty and about land ownership. And in South Africa at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, Desmond Tutu asked When people say that the Bible and politics don t mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading. Martin Luther resisted such radical change. In many ways, he was a conservative, and was horrified by some of the radical political consequences of the Reformation. But in each of these situations, day by day and week by week, worship shaped and re-shaped the ways God s people engaged with the culture of the church and wider society. For parts of the media and some political leaders, it s tempting to conclude - as Margaret Thatcher and the right-wing
media did when the Church of England produced the Faith in the City report in the 1983 - that this is a flawed gospel, because religion is not political it s a private affair. But there s more at stake here than politics, for in all of these situations, Christians are engaged in a profoundly theological debate about who has the right to claim our allegiance and shape our lives. Is it the God? Or is it the religious and political leaders of the day? You d not expect a Methodist minister and a successor of Hugh Price Hughes or Donald Soper, to suggest anything other than God. And there aren t many better words to express how than some of the words from today s Gospel. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. But what about us? How does the way we worship affect the way we live our lives? Do we come to church expecting our lives to be shaped and re-shaped by what we experience here? Let me return to Eugene Boring s comment, that Any group who dares to sing, Praise God, from who, all blessings flow is engaging in a strenuous argument with a culture that sings Praise the celebrities and the powerful and the rich, from whom everything the rest of us is after flows. So how does what we say and do here, enable us to engage in theological debate with the culture of the church and society, and to challenge the wider world about who it is that claims their ultimate allegiance? This is a question about apologetics, mission and evangelism. And I ask it in this context, because I m convinced that it s only when the way we practice these arises out of worship, that will have depth and integrity. Because if these aren t shaped by worship offered to, and in the presence of God, who sustains, nurtures and saves us, they ll be shaped by the culture of the community in which we live. And we ll be tempted (because we re human) to use the means used by those who have power and influence in the world. Celebrities. Politicians. And other leaders. The way of Jesus, on the other hand, begins by us recognising who we are in relation to God. So, it will express our vulnerability, our need of forgiveness, and the strengthen of the Holy Spirit. Not in a grovelling way, but with the humility embodied by Jesus in his birth, life and teaching, and in his death and resurrection. And at times, it ll mean saying, that the way the editors-writers of the Gospel have told Jesus story, isn t the way we d want to embody the Gospel today. And for me, that includes questioning the dispute in the Temple that ends today, and the woes and warnings that follow in the next chapter. For I don t think we need to import the controversies of the end of the 1 st century into our own time. We have enough of our own. But recognising who we are in God s eyes, should lead us onto to acknowledging that those we live amongst, even those with power and riches, are no more, and no less than us. That we re all people made in God s image. That we re all loved by God. And that God would love to draw us all into God s life. The dance, the life, the joy, of the Trinity. This is the core of the hymn we ll sing when I stop. It s a hymn by Anna Briggs, that s on the Singing the Faith website, the digital means of means of keeping our hymn-singing updated. The hymn invites the people who praise God, to reflect on our meaning and purpose, as the church. And the five verses, express different aspects of the mission, God has entrusted to God s people. We re to treasure the earth. To weave new patterns of community out of our diversity. To care and feed for a famished world. To work for reconciliation where communities and people are broken. And to sing and speak for justice when the world is silent. These political and theological activities are rooted in our worship of God. So, the themes are familiar, and it s right that they should be because they don t change. And our
way of engaging with them in our everyday lives expresses our commitment to live in Christ s way. As well as celebrating the 500 years of the Reformation this week, we ll celebrate another anniversary closer to home tomorrow, and that s the 130 th anniversary of the West London Mission. When Hugh Price Hughes envisioned the Forward Movement, that led to Missions being established in city centres throughout the country, he wanted to reform the whole of Methodism by engaging with people where they were. So, as well as establishing work to support the poorest, there were two patterns of worship, in the early years. One was recognisable to Methodists everywhere and it was for those who worked in the Mission. The other had more in common with the music hall and it appealed to people who weren t used to churches. The second was evangelical, The first shaped the lives of those who d committed themselves to the work. 130 years later, I think the task of providing accessible worship that has integrity, is harder than it was then. But one of the ways we can assess whether what we do is relevant, is how it shapes us, and what it leads us to do and become. One of the ways our worship does this for me has to do with the words we sing. Maybe, because I returned to church, just at the time when new hymns were being written by members of the Iona Community. Anna Briggs is another of their number, and what I like about her writing is that it reflects her experience of life. She consciously writes as a woman, often about difficult or painful issues, because she says that wants her hymns to help us to sing about our vulnerability, physicality and uncertainty. She also likens hymn writing, to knitting, another of her loves! For me, there are similarities in what she aims to do, with what the Reformation achieved by enabling people to worship in their mother tongue. And what Hugh Price Hughes did when he introduced different patterns of worship for different people. The imagery and language she uses, enables me to bring the whole of my humanity into worship, and that s important because if we can t do that worship can t shaped or re-shaped us. The challenge for us all, though, is to look beyond what happens here. Worship God - affects every choice we make, for whether it s a personal, political or economic one, for followers of Christ, every choice is ultimately a theological choice. But it can only do that if we arrive expecting to be shaped. And leave believing we ve been reshaped. So, what about you? Is this what you expect? Is this what you believe? If it s not, you might like to wonder why you are, here! Amen. Sue Keegan von Allmen 29 th October 2017 You call us out to praise you You call us out to praise you, The God who gave us birth, To gather in communion And treasure your whole earth; We are your living story, To hear and to be heard; We praise your name, who write us, The Author and the Word.
For changing hues and textures, New patterns, still you search, To weave your seamless garment, The fabric of your church; Our tattered faith you cherish, Reclaim from wear and moth; We praise your name, who twine us, The Weaver and the Cloth. The church that speaks forgiveness Confesses its own need, The church that feels its hunger Finds grace to care and feed; Our famished world is crying, Its future filled with dread; We praise your name, who fill us, The Baker and the Bread. The church that offers healing Discerns its wounds and loss; The church that faces dying Shares life beyond the cross; To people torn and broken Your mercy is revealed; We praise your name, who love us, The Healer and the Healed. Our feeble voices struggle To sing your justice clear; The world is sunk in silence, Each discord echoes fear; One voice alone is ragged, Together we are strong; We praise your name, who breathe us, The Singer and the Song. Words: Anna Briggs The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada* Metre: 76.76.D CCL: 155868