Why come to church?

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Isaiah 53:4-end; Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

Why do you come to church? Why are you here? What’s the point of… all this?

Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. By which I think he meant that religion numbed the realities of life. Some of the popular forms of Christianity today sell faith as a fix – The guide to a hashtag blessed life; Happiness, contentment, even wealth can be yours, with sufficient prayer. You will be healed. Your life will be better. Church can solve your problems. Does faith, Christianity, make your life better? Is that why you go to church?

Aristotle thought happiness was the goal of life and philosophy. Here’s a secret: God does not want you to be happy. But God does want you to find joy. Today, you often hear about people talking about contentment as a goal. To be content sounds admirable. Moderate. Mature. Another secret: God does not want you to be content. But God does want you to have peace.

In our Old Testament reading we have a familiar reading – a reading from the Passion – Good Friday. In the old words one of the best lines in the Bible: ‘he was bruised for our iniquities… and with his stripes we are healed.’ It’s visual, visceral; It is not hashtag blessed. The suffering servant of Isaiah speaks of a different kind of vocation.

It’s been interpreted in different ways. Some have thought he’s speaking of Israel – of the suffering of the people, which will be redemptive for the Gentiles or future generations. Some have thought it was the suffering of the remnant – a small portion of faithful Jews suffering for the nation. Others have identified it with a particular figure, and for Christians, even though Jesus was born centuries later, it’s been called a fifth Gospel; so neatly does the suffering servant coincide with the theology of the cross.

There is a sort of mythic background to the suffering servant in the figure of the scapegoat. In Leviticus, among various offerings and sacrifices, Aaron is to take a goat, lay his hands on it and confess all the iniquities, transgressions and sins of the nations, before releasing it into the desert.  You couldn’t do it today – it would be an act of animal cruelty and we’d need to bring in a goat psychologist to help it through the spiritual abuse – but times were different then. Scapegoating and sacrifice provide a psycho-social release to the conflict and violence of society; The figure of the innocent man who is stricken for the people is a figure as old as humanity, encapsulated here in Isaiah’s suffering servant and, even more definitively, in the passage from Hebrews as Jesus becomes both high priest and sacrifice in the Day of Atonement. This figure persists in literature and in life. In tragedy, especially Romeo and Juliet; or Obi Wan Kanobe, Gandalf, Harry Potter’s mother, there is a heroic sense of the healing, redemptive power of sacrifice. While in the dark history of the twentieth-century many such figures emerge who for their nation, for fellow prisoners, for humanity, for justice –  made of themselves a sacrifice for the world. It’s a martyrology of saints that continues to inspire, and has more to say about God than any blessings you can count.

Which gives us the context for today’s Gospel. This is a classic portrayal of irony. [Unlike Alanis Morisette’s rain on your wedding day – which is actually just something that’s a bit disappointing.] James and John are committed to Jesus. And they sense there is power and meaning – even majesty – in him and in his faith. They want to share this glory, this sense of history. It comes, I think, from a good place. Just like me, they long to be close to you.

You can imagine Jesus looking on them with love – as he did the rich young man in last week’s Gospel. But thinking, you don’t really want what you’re asking for. And of course they don’t. They could have stayed with Jesus through the arrest. But all like sheep went astray. At Jesus’ right and left hand are ordinary criminals. Also victims – no one deserves crucifixon – But the point is, that to be at Christ’s right and left is to find the very lowest place imaginable. It is open to anyone – Christianity is nothing if not democratic.

And it’s precisely that conflictual desire to be the greatest, the will to power, the libido domandi, that Christ has come to heal: ‘for the Son of Man came not be served but to serve’. Even when James and John get shot down, the rest begin to bicker as they jostle for position. We don’t hear of the disciples asking for the lowest place; though we do get glimpses of that in some of the women who follow him  (which is presumably why it’s women who first see the resurrection). But despite the disciples’ failure, (and ultimately the deaths of the disciples are just as grisly as their master) the call to follow Jesus is the call to take up your cross; To be the last, not the first; To serve and not be served.

So the question we return to is why are you here? Why come to church? What’s the point? What will you get from coming here?

If you are the rich young man, Jesus has asked you to find ways of distributing your wealth to the poor. If you desire prestige or power, Jesus is asking you to take the lowest place, to become like a slave. If you rest easy in the comfort of good health and wellbeing, Jesus is pointing you to a path of suffering.

The Gospel doesn’t want you to be happy. It doesn’t want you to be content.

This doesn’t sound like good news. But the example of the perfect life we are given in the Gospel only lasted 33 years, which is not much longer than your vicar’s.

It’s not about age though; which measured in minutes, hours and years, is in all cases all-too-brief.

As TS Eliot said: ‘Old men ought to be explorers’. It’s about our attitude to vulnerability, to risk. And here is where the biggest difference between Christianity and the modern world lies. One of the central impulses of modern life is to insulate us from risk. Insurance, health and safety, the law, gated communities, safeguarding, zoos, modern transport, covid regulations are all directed at preventing risk. Now none of these things are in themselves bad. But the safer we are the more our mortality ceases to be a pressing concern. And the more detached we are from the risk and mortality of those who do not share our resources, whether close by or in far-flung places. The terror of lack of shelter, or the inability to put food on the table, vulnerability to a deadly disease, is usually unimaginable for most of us. But it’s estimated that nearly 2% of adults in London are affected by homelessness, and as we heard 2 weeks ago, here in Wandsworth 1 in 3 children don’t have enough to eat. We have all known vulnerability to disease now; But has it made us more compassionate? And if we are commanded to love our neighbour,  how can we be happy or content while such conditions persist? Can we really rest easy in West Putney, knowing the insecurity of our neighbours, far and near?

Jesus preached that the kingdom of God had come near. It is near. But we choose how we participate in it. Love requires vulnerability – and that is the hard saying of the Gospel. How vulnerable will we let ourselves be? Ultimately, we are all that vulnerable – no matter how safe, how well insured; But we are better prepared for that moment if we’ve known vulnerability in our lives. If we have trusted in God. The prayer that Jesus taught is thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. To pray that is to refuse to be happy or content, until there is justice and freedom for all. But if we’re doing what we can, if we’re seeing our love and our community make a difference, we will find joy and we will know peace. Helping someone to a place to stay, sending a family a box of food, Sitting down to talk to a grieving widow,  what is closer to the kingdom of God than that?

And when we are ones suffering, and it’s our bruises and our stripes, if we have trusted him we will know that we share this path with God; That our tears and our prayers are seen by one who knows our suffering; And that as Christ was made perfect, so we shall be made perfect with him.

And this is why you come to church, I hope. To find Christ, in his Word and Sacrament and in our love for one another. And in finding Christ, who has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, to become more like him. Amen.