Easter Day 2023 - Believing Women and other marginalised people

Sermon shared on Easter day at sunrise

Based on Matthew 28:1-10

There’s an African proverb, if you educate a man you educate one person, if you educate a woman, you educate a whole family. Of course gender roles are not, thankfully, what they have been in the past, there are many stay home dads now a days too. But the idea stands. Back in 2012 I heard the previous Archbishop of York’s wife, Revd Margaret Sentamu, who herself grew up in Uganda, speak of that proverb and of how women gossip. And here we see women ready to gossip the gospel. 

Gossip is often seen as a bad thing, and is also gendered, if we talk of “a gossip” I wonder if you, like me, imagine a woman. and now with GDPR we often feel nervous to share news that isn’t our own to share. And of course consent over information is important. Gossip as a word comes from the Old English phrase God Sib, which translates as God Parent, it was a companion so close that you would name them the god parent of your child. Those people you share life and good news with. In medieval Europe the word became a noun specifically referring to the female companions of a women during childbirth – which was apparently at that time a social affair. The bonding of the women in that space and that time, while one of them gave birth was special, and that is what a gossip was. Evidently it has changed over time. But there is something special and feminine about that closeness of sharing a story, sharing life with other people. So when we talk of gossiping the gospel this is much more what I mean. 

Jesus when he meets the women, and it is his choice to meet them, as they already have the news from the Angel. But when Jesus meets the Marys, he sends them off, and in the very opposite of what he’d been saying for much of the stories of his ministry where he asks the followers not to share of who he is, this time he sends them off to go and tell the disciples the good news, the gospel, that he is alive and where they are to go next to meet him. 

Here we have the story of the women who stayed, who went early in the morning to the tomb, creeping in the darkness, not knowing how they might move the stone and get to the body to anoint him with herbs and spices as was their tradition. And instead it was them, who heard the good news first, and who met with the risen saviour. 

When we read this passage we take it for granted that the women were treated as equal to the men, we know their names, albeit most of them Mary, but like Peter, James and John we sometimes just think of them as Jesus’ friends and yet at this point these women would have suspicious, untrustworthy, well they aren’t upstanding men of the community. 

When we think about it, it doesn’t make sense, why did Jesus reveal himself to the women, their testimony wouldn’t have stood up in court, no one believes women. There are times still today when women, trans folk, immigrants, refugees, people of colour, anyone who is marginalised is taken as suspect. This is still a challenge for us, to hear the stories of pain and oppression, to truly listen and believe what we hear, and to journey with those stories as Jesus would -  seeking liberation. For here we see Jesus who trusted women, and believed in women, and who let women share his story with the world. 

Because If Jesus wanted the testimony to stand up in court, then it would have been better to win over the guards, the people with power for they would have been believed. Much better than a group of woman who followed him round, provided for him. Maybe today it would have been the migrants fleeing war and terror and death arriving in small dangerous boats, who would be the ones Jesus would trust to reveal the majesty, the mystery, the magnificence of his return. 

For Jesus. Yes Jesus, is alive and reigns as King of Heaven and Earth and he tells that to us, to the women, to the outsiders, to ones who need a King to bring about liberation and grace and peace and love. Those who need new life. For it is for the poor and the persecuted that God has a preferential heart. And God uses ordinary, everyday people, the powerless and the lowly to share that news. So Jesus appears to the women so that they will gossip the gospel to all of creation. For it is for every single one of us that Jesus has risen and it is for every single one of us to share that news and to believe the women, to hear the voices of the oppressed and to ride with Jesus into new life, liberated in spirit and in truth. Amen. 

Good Friday 2023 - Apophatically finding God

Sermon shared on Good Friday 2023 at St Andrew's Methodist Church.

The service was working through the 7 phrases Jesus shared from the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.
 
I wonder which of the words that Jesus uttered on the cross have resonated with you so far, there are more to come of course and they might speak more. For me this is one of the most powerful ones.
Here we see the humanity of Jesus.
They are words from Psalm 22, words Jesus would have known, and yet in this moment this is what he felt. Abandoned and alone, forsaken. Its similar to the image of Jesus in the garden before he was arrested, praying that God would take away the cup. In these moments Jesus’ humanity is obvious. For we need a human saviour as well as a divine one.
Here, Jesus, for possibly the first time ever, feels disconnected from the Father, in the suffering and pain of death and sin.
I’m not one for big theological words usually, but there are two that I think help and if you forget the words but remember the meaning then that’s ok, I often have to look them up to get them the right way around. These are cataphatic, and apophatic.
One – cataphatic is declaring things as they are. We do this a lot, in a prayer of adoration we say who God is. Or from the psalms God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, always good to all, compassionate to all of creation. And that is all well and good, when God feels close.
But there are times when we need to seek God in apophatic ways. The things that God is not. In this moment Jesus knew what it was like to feel like God was not there, and yet he still cried out to God. There is hope in Jesus’ proclamation even when the words sound hopeless. Into what feels like a void of being forsaken Jesus shouts to the God who he still hopes can hear.
There are times in our lives when we need to cry out to God and hold onto the things that we know God is not, when we can’t declare who God is.
It’s like when ordering food, I know I rule out the things I don’t like before I work out from a shortlist what is left.
Apophatically, We rule out things that God is not and in those gaps we know that God is.
Here in this moment a truly human Jesus, knew what it was like to feel distant from God, to suffer and be separated by sin. The divinity of God and the brokenness of the world meet in Jesus and at this very moment it is tearing him apart, bringing him to death. So that the divine and the human may once again be reunited.
I don’t know what you carry with you, what are the things that cause you to doubt, or to cry out to God, why have you forsaken me, and there isn’t an easy answer, but we do know that God knows what it is like to feel totally alone, to be abandoned and yet to cry out to our maker for God is not absent, even when it can feel like that. There is hope, for us as there is hope for Jesus.
God did not leave us, God did not abandon us and God did not forsake us.

Further reading on this I highly recommend The Dark Womb by Karen O'Donnell.