Readings, hymns and sermon ideas for Sunday 5 July 2020, Fourth Sunday after Trinity

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11: 28) … ‘A Case History’ (1998) by John King, also known as ‘The Hope Street Suitcases’ in Liverpool (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Next Sunday, 5 July 2020, is the Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IV).

Many of us are planning to reopen our churches on Sunday next as move into the next stage of relaxing the Covid-19 lockdown.

Resources for special services on that day, including readings, hymns, sermon ideas and suggestions for prayers and intercession, are available HERE.

Others may wish to mark the return to normality by using the ‘normal’ resources for Sunday as the Fourth Sunday after Trinity.

The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are in two sets, the Continuous readings and the Paired readings. These sets of readings are:

The Continuous readings: Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67; Psalm 45: 10-17; Romans 7: 15-25a; Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30.

There is a link to the Continuous readings HERE.

The Paired readings: Zechariah 9: 9-12; Psalm 145: 8-14; Romans 7: 15-25a; Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30.

There is a link to the paired readings HERE.

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Matthew 11: 17) … ‘Τα κάλαντα’ (‘Carols’), Νικηφόρος Λύτρας (Nikiphoros Lytras)

Introducing the readings:

If our parishes are missing out on the wedding season because of the pandemic lockdown for the past few months, then there is a surprising wedding theme running through most of our readings next Sunday.

God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah, which we read about on 14 June (the First Sunday after Trinity, Genesis 18: 1-15, 21: 1-7), continues to be lived out as Isaac and Rebekah are married.

In the Psalm (and, once again, please note the problems I highlight about the numbering of the verses), we hear a song about a joyful wedding, often read as the joy of the Messiah meeting the hopes of the people.

In the Gospel reading, Christ, who so often compares the promises of the Kingdom of God with the joys of a wedding banquet, responds to his critics by inviting those who feel burdened and weighed down to join him by sharing in the joys he promises.

‘Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field; and looking up, he saw camels coming’ (Genesis 24: 63) … camels on a mountain track near Fethiye in Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67:

For the past three weeks, we have been reading the stories of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, and Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael.

Sarah has since died in Hebron and Isaac is now grown up. Abraham wants his son to marry a woman of his own clan. He sends his head servant back to Haran or Aram-naharaim to find a wife for Isaac. When he reaches the well at Haran, this servant prays to God for a sign to identify the woman God has chosen.

Rebekah shows she is this woman by offering water to the servant and his camels. She says she is kin to Abraham, and she offers hospitality. She tells her brother Laban, who welcomes the servant and his party and offers them a meal. But first, the servant insists, he must explain the reasons for his visit. And this is where this reading begins.

Bethuel, the father of Rebekah and Laban, is Abraham’s nephew. The family worships Abraham’s God, although they also have their household gods. Bethuel and Laban recognise the servant’s mission as divinely inspired. They agree Rebekah shall become Isaac’s wife, but first they will ask for her consent. When she agrees, Laban and Bethuel bless her, praying that she may become the mother or ancestor of many people, who shall live in peace and security.

By now, Isaac has moved Beer-lahai-roi, the ‘well of the living one who sees me,’ the well named by Hagar when God appeared to her there. He now lives at an oasis in the Negev or Negeb Desert, in southern Canaan. It seems that Abraham has died during this time, for when the servant returns he calls Isaac ‘my master.’

Rebekah notices Isaac before she knows who he is, and this is seen as a sign that God has brought them together. Isaac welcomes her into his home, the same tent where his mother had died, and Isaac and Rebekah are married.

A ketubah or Jewish wedding contract in a synagogue in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Psalm 45: 10-17:

Psalm 45 is sometimes known by its Latin name, Eructavit cor meum. It was composed by the sons of Korach on the shoshanim, a musical instrument shaped like a rose, or the tune to which the psalm should be sung.

The psalm has been interpreted as an epithalamium, or wedding song, written to a king on the day of his marriage to a foreign woman, and is one of the royal psalms. It is sometimes read as a Messianic psalm, singing of the Messiah and his relationship with the people.

Once again, a note of caution is needed when preparing this psalm for use next Sunday. The Revised Common Lectionary refers to Psalm 45: 11-18, but the tables of readings in the Book of Common Prayer (p 48), the Church of Ireland Directory and on the Church of Ireland website refer to Psalm 45: 10-17. This is because of the different ways of numbering the verses in different translations.

These notes follow the versification in the Book of Common Prayer (pp 643-644).

In the verses before this reading, the psalmist sings of the qualities of the king, who is fair (handsome), full of grace, blessed by God and glory, a champion ‘for the cause of truth’ (verse 4), humble and righteous. His robes are perfumed with myrrh, aloes and cassia, and there is sweet music in his palace which is decorated with ivory.

Now, in this portion, the psalmist sings to bride. She is blessed and beautiful, honoured with gifts from neighbouring lands, and dressed in robes embroidered with cloth of gold and fine needlework. When she enters the palace, she is glorious to see, followed by her bridesmaids. She and the king will be blessed with descendants so that they shall remembered ‘through all generations’ and praised ‘for ever and ever.’

‘For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self’ (Romans 7: 22) … the Ten Commandments displayed in Saint Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Romans 7: 15-25a:

Although Saint Paul has told his readers that Baptism brings the promise of new life, and Christ’s death brings the promise of eternal life, we have not yet fully attained this new life and are still influenced by evil.

Now Saint Paul writes about the enduring conflict between what we do in our actions and what we want to do in our thoughts.

He turns to himself, and he confesses that he does not do what he truly wants to do, but he does the very thing he hates to do. While he wants to live by God’s law and God’s ways, what he does is not what he wants to do.

He wants to obey God, but he is caught up in sin. His body is at war with his mind. Yet, despite this wretched conflict, he knows that he will be rescued, not by his own actions or intentions, by ‘God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Matthew 11: 17) … traditional musicians in Nevşehir in Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30:

This Gospel reading is divided into three parts, a parable, a wisdom saying, and an exhortation in a typical rabbinic style of teaching.

In the first part (verses 16-19), we read a parable in which the ‘children’ could be seen as Christ, whose critics see him as living a good life, and Saint John the Baptist, who is facing death in prison (see verses 2-15). The people ignore their message, whether it be told austerely, like Saint John at a funeral, or with joy by Christ as at a wedding banquet. Their critics can only see that John neither eats nor drinks, while Christ eats with tax collectors and sinners. But wisdom is shown to be true in deeds and actions.

Wisdom here is Σοφία (Sophía), not merely human wisdom found in knowledge, intelligence, experience, and learning, but the personification of divine wisdom in the Wisdom of God (see Proverbs 1-9; Wisdom 7: 21 to 8: 1). From Patristic times, the feminine personification of Divine Wisdom as Holy Wisdom (Ἁγία Σοφία, Hagía Sophía) refers either to Christ the Word of God or to the Holy Spirit.

In the second part of this reading (verses 25-27), Christ thanks the Father for choosing the simple and uneducated (‘infants’) over ‘the wise and the intelligent.’ Christ is the Father’s representative, and those who know the Father know him because of Christ.

In the third part of this reading (verses 28-30), Christ invites the downtrodden and the oppressed, the weary and those with heavy burdens, to find their rest with him. In the Mishnah, the rabbis argued that those who accept the ‘yoke’ of studying the Torah are freed from governmental duties and worldly cares (see m. Avot 3: 5, m. Berakot 2:2). Christ says his way is easy and his burden is light, freeing them from those burdens and cares. What is his way? To love God and to love one another.

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Matthew 11: 17) … figures in a shop window in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

A reflection on the Gospel reading:

Our churches are reopening next Sunday after the pandemic lockdown has left us missing not just our usual round of Sunday services and church meetings, but also the social dimension of Church life, including the social dimension that we associate with baptisms, weddings and funerals.

We may joke about these being ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ occasions. But they are also the moments that draw the community and families together and that provide identity and shape to communities and families.

And I am also missing the full sporting calendar: the rugby internationals, the provincial championships … I can feel the frustration of teams whose hopes and dreams were stopped in mid-sentence … I still wonder what might have been for the Wexford hurlers, for Leinster rugby, or for Aston Villa …

Even if I never flew any flags, donned the scarves or sang the songs, in my mind I have been on the terraces, in the stands, or missing the show on television.

Entering into the spirit of a game moves us from being mere spectators to feeling we truly are participants … that every shout and every roar is a passionate response, is true encouragement, is wish fulfilment … the more passion the more we not only hope but believe that our team is going to win.

When we go to weddings and funerals, the attitude we go with makes a world of difference: do I go as a spectator or as a participant?

When we get back to normal life, imagine going to a funeral and failing to offer sympathy to those who are grieving and mourning.

Shortly after my ordination, I was asked to officiate at my first wedding. Initially, I declined the invitation to go to the reception afterwards, until someone chided me gently and asked me: are you at this wedding as a spectator or as a participant?

Perhaps, as a new curate, I was too worried about sending out the wrong signals. If I stood back, would I be reproached for not eating and drinking with the people I was there to serve (see Matthew 11: 18)? If I went, would I be seen as being too interested in eating and drinking (verse 19; cf Romans 7: 15-16)?

But it was never about me, surely. It was only ever about the couple getting married.

Some years ago, a student was telling me about her parish placement as an ordinand. Initially, she was uncomfortable with the style of worship and the theological emphasis of the parish she was placed in. But the parish reacted to her warmly and gently. And as the weeks rolled into months, she realised she had moved from being an observer on Sunday mornings, to being an engaged visitor, to being a participant.

When we join in waves and chants at matches, join in the dance at weddings, sing the hymns and enter into the prayers at another church, we are moving from being observers and spectators to being participants. And the great opportunity for this transformation is provided Sunday after Sunday in our own churches, not at the Liturgy but in the Liturgy.

If you have been to the Middle East, or have just seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know that dancing at Jewish weddings was traditionally a male celebration. I have seen at funerals in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean that the open mourning and weeping is usually expressed on behalf of the community by women in particular. In classical times, a man’s worth in life was counted by the number of women crying at his funeral.

These traditions were passed on through the generations by children learning from adults and by children teaching each other.

In this Gospel reading, we see how Christ has noticed this in the streets and the back alleys as he moves through the towns and cities, probably in Galilee and along the Mediterranean shore.

He sees the children playing, the boys playing wedding dances, and the girls playing funeral wailing and mourning.

He notices the ways in which children can reproach each other for not joining in their playfulness:

We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn. (verse 17)

Even as he speaks there is playfulness in the way Jesus phrases his observation poetically. There is humour in the way he uses Greek words that rhyme for dance and mourn at the end of each line of the children’s taunts:

Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν
καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε:
ἐθρηνήσαμεν
καὶ οὐκ ἐκόψασθε.

Perhaps he was repeating an everyday rebuke in Greek at the time for people who stand back from what others are doing. We might put poetic rhyme on his lips here:

A wedding song we played for you,
The dance you did but scorn.
A woeful dirge we chanted too,
But then you would not mourn.

The boys playing tin whistles and tin drums are learning to become adult men. The girls wailing and beating their breasts in mock weeping are learning to become adult women. Each group is growing into the roles and rituals that will be expected of them when they mature.

Like all good children’s games, the point is the game, not who wins.

The games we played as children now seem silly and pointless. But when we were children they mattered as a communal and community experience. The fun was not because there was anything to win. The fun was in taking part. And in taking part we were helped in the process of growing and maturing and making the transition from childhood to adolescence, and from adolescence to adulthood.

To and fro, back and forth, these boys and girls in the market place play the games of weddings and funerals. The music they play shifts and changes its tones and tunes. This endless, pointless, repetition is their inherited way of learning and socialising. Their playfulness ensures their tradition and culture is reinforced and is handed on to the next generation.

But if the boys make music and the girls do not dance, if the girls wail and the boys do not weep, how can they have a shared story, a shared adulthood, a shared culture, a shared future, a shared humanity?

When we refuse to take part in the game, in the ritual, we refuse to take part in the shaping of society, we are denying our shared culture.

When reciprocity collapses, we are denying our shared humanity.

We can become paralysed by our inability to enter into the game of others. And then the game turns from song and dance to what we might call ‘the blame game.’

It is so easy when I withdraw from the social activities of others to blame them.

Yes, there is a time for dancing and a time for mourning: each has its proper place, and they flow into each other, like the children’s game when it is working. But when vanity gets in the way, there is a break-down in our understanding of time and of humanity.

If I stand back detached, and remain a mere observer of the joys and sorrow in the lives of others, I am not sharing in their humanity.

And in not sharing in your humanity, I am failing to acknowledge that you too are made in the image and likeness of God.

But when we rejoice with people in their joys, and when we mourn with people in their sorrows, we are putting into practice what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us about us being not only made in the image and likeness of God individually but communally and collectively too as humanity.

Imagine going to a wedding but not getting onto the floor and dancing … dancing at an Italian wedding in Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 16 ‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another,

17 “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.”

18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; 19 the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’

25 At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

‘For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11: 30) … pilgrim figures in a shop window in Santiago de Compostela (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Liturgical Resources:

Liturgical Colour: Green (Ordinary time, Year A).

The Collect of the Day:

O God, the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
Increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal
that we finally lose not the things eternal:
Grant this, heavenly Father,
for Jesus Christ’s sake, our Lord.

The Collect of the Word:

Almighty God,
your son Jesus Christ has taught us
that what we do for the least of his brothers and sisters
we do also for him:
give us the will to serve others as he was the servant of all,
who gave up his life and died for us;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Eternal God,
comfort of the afflicted and healer of the broken,
you have fed us at the table of life and hope.
Teach us the ways of gentleness and peace,
that all the world may acknowledge
the kingdom of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘Her clothing is embroidered cloth of gold. She shall be brought to the king in raiment of needlework’ (Psalm 45: 13-14) … traditional dancers in Cappadocia in central Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Suggested Hymns:

Genesis 24: 34-38, 42-49, 58-67:

383, Lord, be thy word my rule
323, The God of Abraham praise

Psalm 45: 10-17:

528, The Church’s one foundation
142, Wake, O wake with tidings thrilling

Zechariah 9: 9-12:

217, All glory, laud, and honour
347, Children of Jerusalem
125, Hail to the Lord’s anointed
238, Ride on, ride on in majesty

Psalm 145: 8-15:

24, All creatures of our God and King
42, Good is the Lord, our heavenly King
80, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father
125, Hail to the Lord’s anointed
321, Holy, holy, holy! Lord God almighty
73, The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended
492, Ye servants of God, your master proclaim

Romans 7: 15-25a:

51, Awake, my soul, and with the sun
572, How great the tale, that there should be
553, Jesu, lover of my soul

Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30:

398, Alleluia! sing to Jesus
567, Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go
649, Happy are they, they that love God
127, Hark what a sound and too divine for hearing
418, Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face
92, How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
576, I heard the voice of Jesus say
97, Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
587, Just as I am, without one plea
103, O Christ the same, through all our story’s pages
363, O Lord of heaven and earth and sea
451, We come as guests invited
627, What a friend we have in Jesus
22, You shall cross the barren desert

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Matthew 11: 17) … buskers on a train in Sorrento (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

Readings, hymns and sermon ideas for Sunday 28 June 2020, Third Sunday after Trinity

‘Whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me’ (Matthew 10: 40) … a welcome sign at Athens Airport (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Next Sunday, 28 June 2020, is the Third Sunday after Trinity (Trinity III).

The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are in two sets, the Continuous Readings and the Paired Readings:

The Continuous Readings: Genesis 22: 1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6: 12-23; Matthew 10: 40-42.

There is a link to the continuous readings HERE.

The Paired Readings: Jeremiah 28: 5-9; Psalm 89: 1-4, 15-18; Romans 6: 12-23; Matthew 10: 40-42.

There is a link to the paired readings HERE.

A welcome sign in a church porch in Malahide, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Introducing the Readings:

The word welcome is used six times in the three short verses in this Gospel reading.

The Greek verb δέχομαι (déchoma-ee), which is used here, means to take by the hand, to receive, to grant access to, a visitor, to receive with hospitality, to receive into one. It can refer to a way of responding generously to something said, to respond positively to teaching or instruction, to receive favourably, to embrace or to make one’s own home.

Irish people like to think of Ireland as the land of a hundred thousand welcomes. English people have always put a high value on hospitality – although I fear ‘post-Brexit’ Britain raises questions about whether hospitality is widely cherished as an English value today.

But our concepts of welcome and hospitality come nowhere close to the way these values are expressed by Greeks. In the village in Crete where I have stayed regularly for five years, the baker welcomes me back as I am buying bread for breakfast, wanting not only to assure me that he remembers me year-by-year but to be assured that I remember him too. In the newsagents, I am asked how long I am there for ‘this time’ – it not only conveys the memory that I have been there before but contains the hope that I would be here many more times too.

The Greek concept of welcome implies that the stranger is becoming a neighbour, a friend. It is not a tourist marketing ploy. It is not a cheap expression of gratitude for return business. It is simply a part of the Greek nature and culture to welcome the stranger or the foreigner. And the Greeks have another word for it – φιλοξενία (philoxenia).

In classical Greece, hospitality was a right, and a host was expected to see to the needs of the guests. The ancient Greek term xenia, or theoxenia, expresses this ritualised guest-friendship relation: welcoming the guest is welcoming a god. In classical Greece, someone’s ability to abide by the laws of hospitality determined nobility and social standing.

The Stoics regarded hospitality as a duty inspired by Zeus himself. The word φιλοξενία (philoxenia), from φῐ́λος (phílos), a loved one who is more than a ‘friend,’ and ξένος (xénos), a ‘stranger’ or ‘outsider,’ is used by Plato, Polybius, Philo of Alexandria and others to express the warmth properly shown to strangers, and the readiness to share hospitality or generosity by entertaining in one’s home.

It is a word that is used constantly in the epistles in the New Testament.

Saint Paul speaks of κοινωνοῦντες τὴν φιλοξενίαν διώκοντες (Romans 12: 13), or the importance of contributing to the needs of the saints – those inside the Church, and extending hospitality to strangers – those from outside who must be welcomed.

In Hebrews 13: 2, the author uses the phrase τῆς φιλοξενίας μὴ ἐπιλανθάνεσθε when saying, ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.’

The concepts of to be hospitable (Φιλόξεον, philoxeon or φιλόξενος philoxenos), or to show hospitality (ξενοδοχέω, xenodocheo) occur too in I Timothy 3: 2; Titus 1: 8, I Peter 4: 9, and I Timothy 5: 10. For example: ‘she must be well attested for her good works, as one who has brought up children, shown hospitality (ἐξενοδόχησεν), washed the saints’ feet, helped the afflicted, and devoted herself to doing good in every way’ (I Timothy 5: 10).

One of the requirements of a bishop in the New Testament Church is to be ‘hospitable,’ to be welcoming to strangers (I Timothy 3: 2; Titus 1: 8).

But the NRSV translation shows its weaknesses in those passages. It is not enough to translate the words as hospitality or welcome; it is hospitality towards the stranger, it is welcoming the outsider, the stranger, the foreigner, the person who is different who comes among us. And in the list of priorities, care for others, for children and hospitality to the stranger come before looking after the needs of church members, described here are washing the saints’ feet.

The concept and the duty of philoxenia is in contrast to φιλία (philia), for it is easy to love those who are like us, from the same family or locality, and is in contrast to xenophobia, the fear of the stranger or the other, which is both unfounded and obsessive – and which has grown in Greece in recent decades and found expression in disgusting far-right groups.

The Christian virtue of philoxenia has its roots in the injunctions to hospitality in Leviticus 19: 18 and 34. We are not just to love our neighbours as ourselves, but: ‘The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.’

Despite what is being said in the current debate dividing Anglicanism and many other Christian traditions, the sin of Sodom (see Genesis 19) was to refuse to welcome the stranger. The Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109, makes it clear. For 1,700 years after the destruction of Sodom, ancient Jews linked the destruction of Sodom to the refusal of hospitality, not to homosexuality.

What we often call ‘hospitality’ is really entertaining, and typically we offer it to friends who will reciprocate by inviting us back. Hospitality to strangers is not entertaining friends or neighbours. Philoxenia is much more than that. Philoxenia turns on its head xenophobia and any other irrational attitude to those who are different, those who are strangers, those who come from the outside.

And Christ reminds the disciples in this Gospel reading that whoever welcomes them welcomes him. And that welcome begins not in the large gestures, such as accepting a whole, complex set of dogmatic statements and teachings, but in small, gentle gestures, such as offering a cup of water to those who are thirsty.

What are the limits or bounds to our welcomes, our hospitality, our openness to others who are different or who are outsiders?

Abraham preparing for the sacrifice of Isaac … a stained glass window in Saint John’s Church, Wall, near Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Genesis 22: 1-14:

The near-sacrifice of Isaac, or the Akedah as it is called in the Jewish tradition, is a story that probably asks more questions than it answers.

Each time we hear it, I imagine we listen in horror as Abraham seems to be preparing to sacrifice his only son. And the story comes with all the gruesome details, as Abraham climbs the mountain, builds the altar, arranges the wood, binds his son, places him on the altar, and takes the knife into his hand. The looming tragedy is averted only at the very moment second.

It is a gripping, chilling and troubling story.

But at a time when child-sacrifice was a cultural norm, where people believed that sacrificing their first-born children was a way of appeasing the gods, this story turns those old superstitions on their head. Abraham knows the old ways.

But his relationship with God is a startling new relationship, founded on love. And this God is different from all the so-called gods. No, he does not demand human sacrifice, no he does not have a mean and violent streak.

Instead, this God that Abraham has begun getting to know, wants a relationship with us that is built not on fear, but on love and on freedom.

The child who was at risk is saved, the child who was bound up is set free, the child who was the victim of old-fashioned, out-dated superstitions now becomes part of the relationship between God and humanity that is sealed not by sacrifices like this, but by love.

Had Abraham forgotten God’s earlier promise so soon, the promise made to Abraham and Sarah that they would have children and through them they would be the spiritual ancestors of all nations?

And it is a story that challenges us to reassess our own notions about God.

Are our relationships with God founded on fear or on love?

Do we see God as a god who needs to be appeased or a God who encourages and enlivens our capacity to love?

‘Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death’ (Psalm 13: 3) … a funeral stele in Kerameikos Cemetery in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Psalm 13:

Psalm 13 is often known in English by its opening words in the King James Version, ‘How long, O Lord.’ The words ‘How long?’ – repeated four times in this psalm – resemble cries.

Early Patristic sources suggest Psalm 13 was composed by David when his son Absalom conspired against him. The entire psalm is an appropriate prayer for the well-being of a sick person, according to the Chatam Sofer, one of the great rabbis of central Europe in the early 19th century. The Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon described this as the ‘How Long Psalm’ – or the ‘Howling Psalm.’ Certainly, this psalm gives voice to feelings that arise in any of the many trials we may experience in life.

Both Jewish and Christian commentators note the three-part structure of Psalm 13, with verses 2-3 in the Hebrew (1-2 in the KJV) relating to David’s complaint, verses 4-5 in the Hebrew (3-4 in the KJV) expressing David’s prayer, and verse 6 in the Hebrew (5-6 in the KJV) describing David’s salvation.

The psalmist appears to be frustrated by waiting for God: four times he asks ‘how long …?’ When, he asks, will God care for him again and return to taking an interest in him? How long must his soul feel alienated from God? How long will his those who ignores God’s ways continue to insist that his trust in God is foolishness?

He prays for God’s help. He asks God to strengthen him and give him the will to continue living. The psalmist has trusted in God’s steadfast love and generosity. He hopes to thank God for saving him by singing God’s praises.

‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6: 23) … memorials and gravestones in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Romans 6: 12-23:

The New Testament reading concludes with a sentence that I remember from my childhood as being popular with sandwich-board preachers handing out tracts and and street evangelists: ‘The wages of sin is death…’ But they often forget, perhaps on purpose, to quote the full verse, with its promise: ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 6: 23).

In this reading from the Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul challenges us to consider the same differences we discussed in light of the reading from the Book Genesis.

Do we believe in a god who would treat us as slaves who must obey, or the God who sees us as faithful partners who are caught up in his love?

Once again, we are offered a choice between death and life, between slavery and freedom, between blind obedience and love.

Saint Paul has told his readers that baptism has changed their way of being from one in which God responded to their continual contravention of the Law by loving them more to one in which sin is no more. But freedom from sin still means they can be tempted. We need to take care to avoid using any parts or functions or our minds or bodies to advance the cause of evil. At the end of time, sin will not be our master. Instead, because of our Baptism, we can depend on God’s free gift of love. We are free, but not free to behave as we like.

‘Whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous’ (Matthew 10: 41) … a welcome at a front door in Rethymnon on the Greek island of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 10: 40-42:

We are given practical examples of how this life of love and freedom are lived out in our Gospel reading, when Christ tells us that whatever we do for those who are in need, it is as though we do it for him.

It is in serving others and in loving others that we find freedom and a true relationship with God.

This reading is part of Christ’s final instructions to his disciples as he prepares them to continue his mission. Earlier he has told them that being his followers will, at times, be difficult, and that they will be persecuted. Now he tells them the nature of the authority they will have, and will hand on to future disciples.

At the time, someone’s agent was to be treated the same as the person they were acting on behalf of. Christ goes beyond this: to welcome a disciple is to welcome both Christ and the Father.

Prophecy (verse 41) continues into the era of the risen Christ. If one ‘welcomes a prophet,’ recognising his office and his authenticity, his good ‘name,’ one will ‘receive a prophet’s reward,’ in other words, a place in the Kingdom. When one welcomes a ‘righteous person’ or a follower of Christ, will be rewarded. Even the smallest act of human kindness that costs little or nothing may mean the difference between life and death for the person on the receiving end, and will not go unnoticed in God’s eyes, will not go without reward.’

‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me’ (Matthew 10: 40) … a welcome sign at Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania on the Greek island of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 10: 40-42 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 40 ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; 42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’

40 Ὁ δεχόμενος ὑμᾶς ἐμὲ δέχεται, καὶ ὁ ἐμὲ δεχόμενος δέχεται τὸν ἀποστείλαντά με. 41 ὁ δεχόμενος προφήτην εἰς ὄνομα προφήτου μισθὸν προφήτου λήμψεται, καὶ ὁ δεχόμενος δίκαιον εἰς ὄνομα δικαίου μισθὸν δικαίου λήμψεται. 42 καὶ ὃς ἂν ποτίσῃ ἕνα τῶν μικρῶν τούτων ποτήριον ψυχροῦ μόνον εἰς ὄνομα μαθητοῦ, ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, οὐ μὴ ἀπολέσῃ τὸν μισθὸν αὐτοῦ.

‘Welcome, No Exit’ … ‘Welcome, Way Out’ … signs at Cambridge Railway Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical resources:

Liturgical colour: Green (Ordinary Times, Year A)

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
you have broken the tyranny of sin
and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts
whereby we call you Father:
Give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service,
that we and all creation may be brought
to the glorious liberty of the children of God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Collect of the Word:

O God,
who has taught us
that those who give a cup of water in his name
will not lose their reward:
open our hearts to the needs of your children,
and in all things make us obedient to your will,
so that in faith we may receive your gracious gift,
eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

O God,
whose beauty is beyond our imagining
and whose power we cannot comprehend:
Give us a glimpse of your glory on earth
but shield us from knowing more than we can bear
until we may look upon you without fear;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

‘Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple …’ (Matthew 10: 42) … a café in Ashford, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Suggested Hymns:

Genesis 22: 1-14:

13, God moves in a mysterious way
59, New every morning is the love
601, Teach me, my God and King
323, The God of Abraham praise

Psalm 13:

528, The Church’s one foundation

Jeremiah 28: 5-9:

381, God has spoken – by his prophets

Psalm 89: 1-4, 15-18:

80, Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father
32, O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder
490, The Spirit lives to set us free
374, When all thy mercies, O my God

Romans 6: 12-23:

642, Amazing grace (how sweet the sound!)
400, And now, O Father, mindful of the love
87, Christ is the world’s light, he and none other
703, Now lives the Lamb of God
638, O for a heart to praise my God
594, O Lord of creation, to you be all praise!
597, Take my life and let it be
492, Ye servants of God, your master proclaim

Matthew 10: 40-42:

517, Brother, sister, let me serve you
495, Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love

‘O God, whose beauty is beyond our imagining and whose power we cannot comprehend: Give us a glimpse of your glory on earth’ (Post-Communion Prayer) … a blanket of flowers beneath trees in a garden in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

‘Christ is the world’s light, he and none other’ (Hymn 87) … a summer sunset at the Rectory in Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Readings, hymns and sermon ideas for Sunday 21 June 2020, Second Sunday after Trinity

Hagar and Ishmael abandoned in the wilderness (Source)

Patrick Comerford

Next Sunday, 21 June 2020, is the Second Sunday after Trinity (Trinity II). Sunday is also Father’s Day

The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted for use in the Church of Ireland, are in two sets, the Continuous Readings and the Paired Readings:

The Continuous Readings: Genesis 21: 8-21; Psalm 86: 1-10, 16-17; Romans 6: 1b-11; Matthew 10: 24-39.

There is a link to the continuous readings HERE

The Paired Readings: Jeremiah 20: 7-13; Psalm 69: 8-11 [12-17], 18-20; Romans 6: 1b-11; Matthew 10: 24-39.

‘Hagar in the Desert’ (1960) by Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

Introducing the readings:

Two weeks ago, we had a very lengthy Old Testament reading, describing God’s work of creation and telling us how God saw all of creation to be good (Genesis 1: 1 to 2: 4a). It was followed that Sunday by a Gospel reading telling us to go out into that beautiful world in mission with the message and mission of God’s love for all creation (Matthew 28: 16-20).

On the following Sunday (14 June 2020), we heard how Sarah laughs when she hears from the messengers who visit Abraham at Mamre that she is going to be pregnant and give birth to a child within a year.

But the joy and laughter of those readings is in sharp contrast to what seem to be very sad and gloomy readings, filled with tears, next Sunday. Although it is Father’s Day, these readings may seem more appropriate for a Sorrowful Mother’s Day.

In the Old Testament reading (Genesis 21: 8-21), Hagar and her son are abandoned in the wilderness. It appears to be a story of cruel marginalisation and exclusion of a young mother and her helpless child. In the Gospel reading (Matthew 10: 24-39), family divisions and the cruelty that only family members can inflict on one another are brought to the fore again. Where do we find the love of God in these Bible readings, and where is the love of God to be found in the Church today?

‘Hagar and Ishmael at the Well’ (1842) by Marshall Claxton (1813-1881), York Museums Trust

Genesis 21: 8-21:

Following the visit to Abraham, and the promise to Abraham and Sarah of a child, which we read about last week (Genesis 18: 1-15, 21: 1-7, 14 June 2020, Trinity I), Isaac has been born to Abraham and Sarah, in their old age, and the child has been circumcised, as sign of being one of God’s people.

Sarah has said, ‘God has brought laughter for me’ (verse 6), and the name Isaac means ‘he laughs.’

Now, at the age of three, Isaac is weaned, and a religious feast is called for.

Earlier passages (16: 11 and 16: 16) identify Ishmael as ‘the son of Hagar’ (verse 9). The name Ishmael means ‘God harkens,’ but Ishmael is not named in this reading – an indication that he ranks lower than Isaac. We might recall that when Sarah did not bear a son for Abraham, he exercised the legal option of producing an heir through a slave woman.

At the feast, Sarah sees Ishmael playing or laughing with Isaac. She sees this as a real threat to her own life, so she asks Abraham to cast out’ Hagar and Ishmael (verses 9-10).

Abraham hesitates, for he loves Ishmael and is forbidden by law to do this. But Abraham hears God telling him to do as Sarah asks, promising Abraham’s line of descent will continue through Isaac, but that Ishmael too will also become father of a nation (verses 12-13). Abraham gives Hagar bread and water and sends her and her son out into the wilderness of Beer-sheba (verses 14-15).

When the water runs out, Hagar realises death is near, and fears for her child’s survival (verses 15-16). God hears Ishmael’s cry and Hagar sees a well. God is with the boy, he grows up, lives in the wilderness of Paran, in northern Sinai, and marries an Egyptian woman (verses 17-21). All this is seen as his exclusion from God’s plan, and Genesis continues with the story of Isaac.

I imagine this story is going to be heard with shock, dismay and a sense of cruelty by many women throughout Ireland, as they think of their children and wonder what has happened to them.

Sarah is an old woman, worried that her husband Abraham has no children to inherit his name and his wealth. So, at Sarah’s own suggestion, Abraham has a child with Hagar.

Ishmael is Abraham’s first-born child, and is somewhat older than Sarah’s own son, Isaac. Sarah is not jealous of Abraham and Hagar. But when she sees Ishmael playing with Isaac, she worries about Isaac’s future and inheritance.

At Sarah’s demand, Abraham takes Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness and abandons them, leaving only a small supply of water, not knowing what is going to happen to them, but believing he is doing what God has told him to.

Imagine the plight of this abandoned woman. The man she once had a child for has cast her aside, left her and her child, apparently not caring whether they live or die.

How often have similar things happened, even in recent years, in Irish society?

Until recent decades, Irish families, worried about the way a woman in the family conceived, sent her away. But, unlike Hagar, they were often sent away even before they gave birth. They were abandoned in so-called ‘Mother and Baby’ homes, county homes and Magdalene laundries in every county in this land.

So often not just the Church but society at large moralised about these women and sent them into isolation, not worrying how they would survive or about the future facing their children.

Families often remained silent in the face of these great and grave injustices. But silence did not always mean acceptance or acquiescence. It was a shameful time, where shame was transferred unto young and vulnerable women, when the real shame lay with those who exercised control in this way on behalf of all society.

Silently, many sisters, mothers, and to be honest, fathers and brothers too, grieved in their hearts at this harsh judgment, this immoral moralising.

And even today, to speak out about what has happened divides families, communities and societies. A deep, searing division that makes it easy to understand Christ’s apocalyptic warning in the Gospel reading: ‘For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household’ (Matthew 10: 34-36).

In the history of Judaism and of Christianity, there have been complicated, tortuous efforts to justify Abraham’s gross injustice towards Hagar.

The Apostle Paul makes Hagar’s experience an allegory of the difference between law and grace (see Galatians 4: 21-31). But he is not passing judgment on either Hagar or Sarah; he is simply using them as examples to illustrate a point he is making about law and grace, whether we should live by the letter or live by the spirit of our spiritual and religious values.

Later, Saint Augustine said Hagar symbolises an ‘earthly city,’ or the sinful condition of humanity (see Augustine, City of God 15: 2).

Yet Hagar committed no sin, did nothing wrong, for she only did what Sarah and Abraham had suggested. Certainly, her child Ishmael was innocent beyond doubt when they were both abandoned to seemingly certain death.

Augustine’s view was built on by Thomas Aquinas and by John Wycliffe, who compared the children of Sarah to the redeemed, and those of Hagar to the unredeemed, who are ‘carnal by nature and mere exiles.’

Surely if Hagar was ‘carnal by nature’ then so too were Abraham and Sarah; yet they go without any condemnation.

The rabbis were much kinder when it came to commenting on Hagar, and often describe her as Pharaoh’s daughter.

The Midrash Genesis Rabbah says Hagar was Pharaoh’s daughter but that Sarah treated her harshly, imposing heavy work on her and striking her. It sounds like a shocking analysis in The Irish Times some years ago by Dr Seán Lucey of the forced labour conditions imposed on hundreds if not thousands of women in county homes the length and breadth of Ireland from the 1920s on.

Some rabbinical commentators identify Hagar with Keturah, the woman Abraham marries after Sarah’s death, saying Abraham seeks her out after Sarah’s death. One great mediaeval rabbi suggests Hagar is given the name Keturah to signify that her deeds are as beautiful as incense and that she remains chaste from the time she Abraham abandons her until he returns for her.

So even Abraham can get things wrong, and think that when his family puts pressure on him he is listening to the voice of God.

Two of the most boring passages in the New Testament must be the genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels (see Matthew 1: 1-17; Luke 3: 23-38). Archbishop Rowan Williams reminded a conference in Cambridge six years ago (June 2014) that these genealogies tell us that God cares for each generation, including individuals who are marginalised or forgotten, as part of God’s plans for the future.

Both genealogies are almost exclusively male. But, unlike Saint Luke, Saint Matthew includes five women among the ancestors of Jesus.

Saint Matthew is anxious to prove the royal ancestry and lineage of Christ, so we might expect his choice of women to include queens, princesses, or the daughters of mighty warriors or great prophets. Instead, he names five women on the margins of society. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary are seen as prostitutes, foreigners, adulterers or single mothers – certainly not the sort of women one might want to boast about in a family tree in some Biblical version of Burke’s Peerage or Burke’s Landed Gentry.

But Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary challenge the Jewish restrictions on marriage to Gentiles, on socially acceptable marriages and the very definition of Jewish-ness which depends on a mother’s Jewish identity. By those definitions, Perez, Boaz, or Solomon, or for that matter David and the whole line of kings of Israel and Judah could never be acceptable.

God still looks lovingly on the women we would push aside and marginalise in our families and in our society. God ignores the moralising, narrow-minded judgmentalism of society, of the religious authorities of our day, or even in our own families.

Hagar, when she is abandoned in the wilderness and when the water she is left with dries up, expects her child to die, and even begins to mourn his death. Like many unmarried mothers in Ireland must have done, she lifts up her voice and weeps, crying out: ‘Do not let me look on the death of the child’ (verse 16).

But God hears the voice of the boy; and the angel of God asks his abandoned mother: ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.’ Then God opens her eyes, and she sees a well of water. She fetches fresh water, and gives the child a drink. She realises now, in that almost baptismal-like moment, that God is with the boy (verses 17-20).

Hagar thirsts not just for water but for justice, truth and mercy. Her parallel in the New Testament is not Mary Magdalene, for there is not a shred of evidence to identify Mary Magdalene with a prostitute or the woman about to be stoned for adultery. Indeed, the Magdalene laundries are not only a shameful blot on our history but, ironically, they were misnamed.

Hagar’s parallel in the Gospels is the Samaritan woman at the well of Sychar (John 4: 5-42), who is also seen as living an immoral life. While the disciples refuse to engage with her or to talk with her, Christ reveals himself to her as the Living Water, and in yet another baptismal-like moment she comes to a fullness of faith that they have yet to mature into, and becomes one of the first great missionaries.

How is God working through the horrific narrative of the abandoned mothers and the babies left to die from malnutrition and curable diseases, the unloved women used as slave labour in the Magdalene laundries, Mother and Baby Homes and County Homes across this land, even in my own lifetime, in my generation?

The voice of the Church needs to be heard – not defensively but speaking out for them. We may have abandoned them as a society, but God never abandons them.

We may have misread the Bible to provide justification for society’s sins, but God never sees them as sinners. And the whole Church, irrespective of denominational boundaries, must speak with one voice saying this was never God’s judgment on these women. This was wrong, it always was, and always will be.

‘All the nations you have made shall come and bow down before you’ (Psalm 86: 9) … flags of nations outside an hotel in Valencia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Psalm 86: 1-10, 16-17:

Psalm 86 is subtitled ‘a prayer of David.’ In this prayer, David gives glory to God (verse 8-10, 12, 13), seeks grace and favour from God, that God would hear his prayers (verses 1, 6, 7), preserve and save him, and be merciful to him (verses 2, 3, 16), and that he would give him joy, grace, strength and honour (verses 4, 11, 17). He pleads for God’s goodness (verse 5, 15) and speaks of the malice of his enemies (verse 14).

Perhaps Psalm 86 has many resonances with the cry of the abandoned Hagar in the wilderness, and the references to a child born to a slave woman.

The speaker is ‘poor and needy,’ which suggests not his poverty but that he is a king, for such repetition is found in royal inscriptions in the ancient Near East. He cries or prays continually for God to preserve his life (verse 2). He presents his soul to God (verse 4), who is ‘good and forgiving’ (verse 5) and is generous and abundant in his love to all who call on him. He is confident that God will hear him in his present troubles (verses 6-7).

Verses 8-10 include a vision that ‘all the nations’ will come to God’s ways, realising that God is greater and more powerful than any god they may have.

The vision in verse 9, ‘All the nations you have made shall come and bow down before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name,’ is quoted in the Book of Revelation: ‘All nations will come and worship before you, for your judgment has been revealed’ (Revelation 15: 4).

In the verses that are missing from this reading in the lectionary, he prays that God will ‘teach me your way … that I may walk in your truth’ (verse 11). In verses 13-15, he contrasts God’s love for him (as seen in rescuing him from grave illness) with his enemies’ attitude towards God: one of insolence, of ignoring God’s ways. He confesses his faith in words God has spoken to Moses (verse 15; see Exodus 34: 6).

He seeks God’s support, considering himself without any right to ask. A girl born of a slave had no rights of any kind (verse 16). He prays for a sign of God’s continuing favour and comfort, so that those who hate him are put to shame (verse 17).

‘Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too might we walk in newness of life’ (Romans 6: 4) … the Resurrection in a panel on the Royal or MacMahon tomb in the Franciscan Friary in Ennis, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Romans 6: 1b-11:

This passage from the Letter to the Romans is in the form of a diatribe, and at times it is difficult to know who is the speaker and who is the respondent. A diatribe was a Socratic rheotorical technique involving questions and answers, changing voices from singular to plural, and from first to second and third person. Saint Paul uses this technique, for example, in Romans 2.

The Apostle Paul has written in the previous chapter of life before Christ, when death was final, and ‘where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’ (5: 20). Now he returns to the using the philosophical approach of diatribe as he asks rhetorically whether we are to go on sinning in order to receive even more grace. ‘By no means!’

He then asks a second question: How can we who have died to sin go on living in it? Do we not realise that Baptism makes everything different for Christians? In Baptism, we die to sin. We are baptised into Christ’s death and into his resurrection. We too are raised from death by the Father, so that we may walk in this shared new life.

Saint Paul appears to be dealing with Gentiles who have become Christians, and in saying they are not subject to Jewish law or the Torah, they are prey to living a life that fails to recognise the reality of sin in all lives. In Baptism, we share in Christ’s death and resurrection. No longer can sin have any place in our lives. But we are responsible for our decisions and our actions. As Christ is the model for our lives, and we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

‘Whoever does not take the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matthew 10: 38) … the Byzantine-style crucifix by Laurence King (1907-1981) in the crypt of Saint Mary le Bow on Cheapside in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 10: 24-39:

In the Gospel reading on the previous Sunday (Matthew 9: 35 to 10: 8 or 10: 23, Sunday 14 June 2020), Christ calls the Twelve together to prepare them for their ministry and mission.

In this reading, Christ continues to prepare the Twelve for this mission, as both their teacher and their master. They are his students, and they are to be like him.

In the past, Christ, says, his enemies have called him Beelzebul (verse 25). This may refer back to an earlier incident, when Christ heals a demoniac who is mute and some Pharisees say, ‘By the ruler of the demons he casts out the demons’ (Matthew 9: 34; see Mark 3: 22, Luke 11: 15), or forward to a subsequent episode when Christ heals a demoniac who is blind and mute and some Pharisees say: ‘It is only by Beelzebul … that this fellow casts out his demons’ (Matthew 12: 24).

Beelzebul was a Canaanite god whose name means ‘lord of the final judgment,’ but in a pejorative pun he was referred to as ‘Beelzebub,’ meaning ‘lord of the flies’ (see II Kings 1: 2-3, 6, 16), and he was associated with the demonic in early Jewish and Christian writing.

If Christ is called Beelzebul, then his disciples can expect to be called worse. But they should not be intimidated. At the end of the era, all ungodly and godly behaviour, now hidden, will be made known (verse 26). Now is the time to proclaim all that Christ has told his disciples privately (verse 27). They are not to fear their persecutors for they can only end your physical life. Instead, they should hold God in awe, for he can destroy those who do not do his will (verse 28).

God cares for the life of even a sparrow, a small bird sold as cheap food for a few coins in the markets of the poor (verse 29), This means we should not be afraid of losing the real life (verse 31). Honest and forthright witness – and outright refusal to do so –have eternal consequences (verses 32-33).

At the Last Day, Christ will speak out on behalf of those who are his faithful witnesses faithfully, but will deny those who deny him

In verses 34-36, Christ gives a new interpretation to the apocalyptic vision in Micah 7: 6, a verse thought to foretell the breakdown of society as the end-times approach (see also Ezekiel 38: 21). Spreading the gospel will have unfortunate consequences. There will be tension and division, even within families, between those who accept Christ’s message and the demands it makes, and those who oppose it.

Christians must put loyalty to Christ above family loyalties (verse 37). Following Christ involves the risk of death, and involves taking up the cross, a sure and certain death for those who rebel against the rulers of the day (verse 38).

Finally, we are presented with a paradox: those who try to save their own earthly lives will lose all, but those who die for Christ will find eternal life (verse 39).

A quilt by Hollis Chatelain showing Archbishop Desmond Tutu surrounded by children

A reflection on the Gospel reading

Many years ago (2008), I was reading through some insightful essays submitted as part of an adult education course in theology. I was excited so many thinking people were engaging with their Christian faith in a challenging, questioning way, seeking to explore and deepen their understanding of how relevant Christianity and the Church are to the world and its problems.

These were not raw, naïve students. They displayed a wide variety of age, experience, and background, and came with a variety of experiences that challenge our stereotypical image of the Church of Ireland. Yes, there were suburban housewives and businessmen, and young people from rectory families. And they brought amazing, often unconventional, questions and insights to the discussions.

But they sat side-by-side – and sat comfortably side-by-side – with the other students: the single mother with teenage sons; the refugee who had seen horrific outrages, only to find herself marginalised by the cold Irish system; the farmer who travelled a round trip of hundreds of miles just to learn more, and to be challenged more deeply by the Christian faith.

Well, no-one said it was going to be easy, did they?

The Christian faith should be challenging. Our reflections on it should be challenging and should challenge us. And, as we integrate that reflection, our discipleship should be challenging to the world … even when that means that there is a price to pay.

How free do you feel you are to express your faith today?

What inhibits us when it comes to talking about your core values and beliefs today?

It may not be fear of persecution and death; it may simply be the prospect of being embarrassed, or of embarrassing others.

How often have you heard people declining to stand up for Christianity in a discussion, saying something like: ‘Well all religions are the same anyway, aren’t they?’

But if we are unwilling to speak up about our beliefs in time of plenty, how difficult will it be to speak up for Christian values, the Christian point of view, when things are difficult, when things are tough?

Some of the greatest people I have known who have spoken up for Christian values and the Christian faith, knowing the consequences but not fearing them, included Church leaders in South Africa during the apartheid era.

As a young adult who had recently come to experience the love of God and started to explore the challenges of Christian discipleship, I was deeply challenged by the witness of the Dean of Johannesburg, who opened the doors of his cathedral and offered sanctuary to black protesters who were being beaten on the cathedral steps by white police using rhino whips.

Dean Gonville ffrench-Beytagh knew the consequences. He was jailed, and eventually exiled from South Africa. To us the words of the German martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he bore the ‘Cost of Discipleship.’

Some years later, while apartheid was still in force, I was privileged to interview Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He too had been Dean of Saint Mary’s in Johannesburg, and when I first met him he was secretary general of the South African Council of Churches.

I was worried about the many death threats he was receiving, and I asked him how he lived with those threats? Was he worried about them? Did he ever consider modifying what he had to say because of them?

He gave me an answer similar to one he gave when he was facing tough questioning before the regime’s Eloff Commission. He told that inquiry:

‘There is nothing the government can do to me that will stop me from being involved in what I believe God wants me to do. I do not do it because I like doing it. I do it because I am under what I believe to be the influence of God’s hand. I cannot help it. When I see injustice, I cannot keep quiet, for, as Jeremiah says, when I try to keep quiet, God’s Word burns like a fire in my breast. But what is it that they can ultimately do? The most awful thing that they can do is to kill me, and death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian.’

Staying quiet when I should speak out will deal a death blow to my morals and my morale. Silence in the face of injustice and suffering is a silent denial of my faith, and of Christ.

I am sure that while they spoke out against the injustices of apartheid and Nazism, those great Church leaders over the past century, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gonville ffrench-Beytagh and Desmond Tutu, were not without fear. They were not that stupid. They knew there were consequences. But they took up their cross and followed Christ, and are worthy of the name Christian (Matthew 10: 38).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was jailed, tortured and died in a concentration camp 75 years ago on 9 April 1945; Gonville ffrench-Beytagh was jailed, tortured and exiled, and for years afterwards continued to suffer from bouts of depression until he died on 10 May 1991; and Desmond Tutu was persecuted, and his home and offices bombed.

But they knew that despite their physical fears were, and the fears they had for the families, who would also suffer socially and physically, that they had little to fear spiritually.

For, as the Apostle Paul challenges us in the Epistle reading on Sunday morning, we have already gone through death with Christ because of our baptism. We are now called to live a new life with him. We are no longer slaves to the old ways of doing things, we are now citizens of the Kingdom of God. Death no longer has dominion (see Romans 6: 3-11).

Being alive to Christ allows the great Christians of our time to speak up when their voice needs to be heard, to take risks even when there is a price to pay. And do it knowing that there is nothing to fear spiritually, even if the consequences are dreadful and frightening by other people’s standards.

How often do we take the easy option out? How often do we give nice names to the bad things we do? How often do we pretend that we are doing the wrong thing for the right reasons? Or simply because we are doing what is expected of us, what were told to do?

How often good labels have been hijacked to disguise the dreadful. The slogan on the gates outside Auschwitz, Dachau and other Nazi death camps was: Arbeit mach frei – ‘Work makes you free.’

The word ‘apartheid’ does not mean racism. It actually means ‘separate development,’ which sounds good except there were no hopes of development and opportunity for anyone but the white people in South Africa.

As he was leading the United States further-and-further along in the nuclear arms race, developing new nuclear missiles that would eventually contribute to economic recession, President Ronald Reagan declared in his Second Inaugural address in 1984: ‘Peace is our highest aspiration. The record is clear, Americans resort to force only when they must. We have never been aggressors.’ They even named one new nuclear weapon ‘Peacemaker’ and named a nuclear warship Corpus Christi.

But it was always so throughout history. In an oft-quoted passage in De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, the Roman orator and historian Tacitus, at the end of chapter 30, quotes a speech by a British chieftain Calgacus addressing assembled warriors about Rome’s insatiable appetite for conquest and plunder: ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (‘where they make a desert, they call it peace,’ Oxford Revised Translation).

This British chieftain’s sentiment was meant as an ironic contrast with the slogan, ‘Peace given to the world,’ frequently inscribed on Roman medals.

This phrase from Tacitus is often quoted alone. The poet Lord Byron, for instance adapts the phrase in Bride of Abydos (1813):

Mark where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it – peace.

The same irony is found when Christ says to his disciples in this Gospel reading: ‘Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have come not to bring peace, but the sword’ (Matthew 10: 34).

It is not that Christ is encouraging his disciples to be warmongers – what a gross misreading of his teachings that would be. Nor is he encouraging family rows, encouraging sons to storm out on their fathers, mothers to nag and niggle at their daughters (Matthew 10: 35).

But he is warning his disciples it is not going to be easy. They are not going to have a quiet time. Those who want a quiet life as Christians can forget about it. And their hopes of a quiet life as passive Christians will vanish quickly.

Are we prepared to stand up for our faith and its values even at the risk of being ridiculed? Even when this upsets the peace of our families, our communities, our society and our land?

Some of those essays I was reading from those students on that adult education course encourage me when it comes to worrying whether people prefer peace at any price or taking a costly stand, even when it challenges prevailing values in our society today.

Many of them had looked at the way we treat immigrants, migrants and refugees in our society. Yes, they observed the rising levels of racism in our society. Yes, they noticed the inadequate welfare and support payments they receive.

But they were even more challenging about the way they thought the Church was too comfortable about the problems we are facing in Irish society today. We are too inward-looking, most of them said in their essays. We are too much of a club.

They had stopped and looked at ordinary, everyday parishes. There is no fear of fathers being set against their sons, mothers against their daughters, daughters-in-law against mothers-in-law, or of finding foes within the household (Matthew 10: 35-37).

Most of them found our parishes were too like comfortable families or clubs, not open to the worries, concerns and fears of the outsider.

Do we love the clubbish atmosphere in the Church of Ireland more than we love the Church, the Gospel and Christ?

Or are we prepared to speak out, not worrying about the consequences, knowing that ‘whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it’ (Matthew 10: 39).

‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? … you are of more value than many sparrows’ (Matthew 10: 29-30) … old pennies on a table in a bar in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 10: 24-39 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 24 ‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25 it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!

26 ‘So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.

32 ‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’

‘Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matthew 10: 37) … Station 5 in the Chapel at Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Resources:

Liturgical Colour: Green (Ordinary time, Year A)

The Collect of the Day:

Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
Send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake.

The Collect of the Word (with the Continuous Readings):

Gracious God,
we who are baptised into Christ Jesus
were baptised into his death:
we pray that, as you raised him from death,
so by the power of the Holy Spirit
we may live the new life to your glory,
knowing ourselves to be dead in sin
but alive for you in Jesus Christ;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Loving Father,
we thank you for feeding us at the supper of your Son.
Sustain us with your Spirit,
that we may serve you here on earth
until our joy is complete in heaven,
and we share in the eternal banquet
with Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘Ibrahim/Abraham/Avraham’ by Stephen Raw in the ‘Holy Writ’ exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral in 2014, bringing together the traditions of the Abrahamic faiths (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Suggested Hymns:

Genesis 21: 8-21:

545, Sing of Eve and sing of Adam
323, The God of Abraham praise

Psalm 86: 1-10, 16-17:

620, O Lord, hear my prayer
140, The Lord will come and not be slow
372, Through all the changing scenes of life
627, What a friend we have in Jesus

Jeremiah 20: 7-13:

No suggested hymns

Psalm 69: 8-11 (12-17), 18-20:

No suggested hymns

Romans 6: 1b-11:

389, All who believe and are baptized
84, Alleluia! raise the anthem
403, Bread of the world in mercy broken
81, Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided
392, Now is eternal life
436, Now let us from this table rise
703, Now lives the Lamb of God
638, O for a heart to praise my God
286, The strife is o’er, the battle done
661, Through the night of doubt and sorrow

Matthew 10: 24-39:

588, Light of the minds that know him
108, Praise to the Holiest in the height
599, ‘Take up thy cross’, the Saviour said

‘Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matthew 10: 37) … Christ is given his cross, a fresco in Analipsi Church in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The hymns suggestions are provided in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling. The hymn numbers refer to the Church of Ireland’s Church Hymnal (5th edition, Oxford: OUP, 2000)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

‘The most awful thing that they can do is to kill me, and death is not the worst thing that could happen to a Christian’ … Archbishop Desmond Tutu visiting Saint George’s and Saint Thomas’s Church, Dublin, and the Discovery Gospel Choir