Fr Harry's Sermon - 30/01/05

We began mass this morning by asking your prayers, mine as well, for the homeless - so having said that we are not talking about the homeless this morning I am talking about us who have homes.

I could have started mass by saying today is the Fourth Sunday in Year A.
I didn't because I know you couldn't control your excitement if I said Year A Fourth Sunday!

Just a quick word. I don't know whether the penny has dropped but the Gospels, apart from John's Gospel are used -
Matthew in Year A, Year B is Mark and Year C is Luke.
We have just finished Luke at the beginning of last Advent. So there is no magic about A, B, C that's what it is and so the last occasions when the Gospel is used during this year is from Matthew's Gospel. I want to say one or two things to you about Matthew's Gospel.

Forget the word Gospel for now. If you were charged with a task of writing the life of Jesus while he was on earth -what would you write, what would you put in? Ok, you have got the Holy Spirit to help you - Matthew had and Mark and Luke, but what would you put in? How would you go about it? You would get at your typewriter or whatever, you are set and away you go. You still have to work out what you are going to put in. Where you start, what the story of Jesus is about.

First and foremost it is not a biography of Jesus - no way. The written Gospels are an account drawn up following years, in some cases, of preaching the risen Jesus - the one that the Father sent and you put to death. Then God raised him; He is the saviour of the world. That's what you are writing about, it is about the power of God our Father at work in Jesus of Nazareth, someone that you knew, you grew up with or maybe you didn't. But at least you have heard about when he was going around with Peter, Andrew and the others, he did such and such a thing - cleansed and healed a leper, gave hearing to deaf people, sight to blind people.

So you start to put the thing together, now where do you start, well strange as it may seem the Gospels didn't start, the written Gospels, in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is very much an add on bit, as seen in the first two chapters of Matthew and for Luke. The Gospel starts with the preached message of salvation, that's a mouthful isn't it? It starts after the Resurrection or more precisely after Pentecost when they get on with the task committed to them by Jesus. They go and tell all nations the Good News. It's a spoken thing not a written thing.

The only written Scriptures are the Jewish Scriptures, long before any Gospels were written, long before Matthew got round to his Gospel and the preaching of the Gospel started Pentecost telling people around we are witnesses to this. God sent his son Jesus, you put him to death we are witnesses that God raised him. That's the Gospel. But it's not written it's preached - it is passed on.

The other thing is that ok your information about Jesus. You have a whole collection of things, sayings that you can draw on, a bit like looking up a reference book. In fact the preachers had a collection of sayings, there are so many of them there is no point going in and bit by bit you find these are incorporated into the different Gospels. Not so much Mark, there is hardly any of that in Mark but it is a sort of guide to the preacher and you'll see it coming up pretty regularly in Matthew as the year unfolds.

So who did Matthew write his Gospel for? First and foremost for us I know that's where the word of God comes in and the action of the Holy Spirit. So the Gospel this morning, the Beatitudes we call them, that is absolutely, brand new fresh for you, for me this morning, Jesus himself speaking through the Gospel, a proclamation of the Gospel. But what Matthew does is writing first and foremost for an almost entirely Jewish Christian church. And, again forget buildings and things, we are not interested in buildings - people, God's people, his new people. He is writing round about, as near as you can say, 80 A.D., which is roughly what 50 years on from when Jesus was crucified and rose. Ten years before or so Jerusalem was sacked or finally almost blotted off the face of the earth by the Romans. But, crucially the temple was sacked, levelled to the ground, the place where Yahweh dwelt with his people. That meant no more sacrifices; they couldn't practise their religion.

Can you imagine what your life would be like if there was no Mass? If you had nothing to turn to, no one to turn to, God had apparently abandoned you - what would you do? Well, the only thing that they could do, God's people, were to organise on the lines of meeting together, which became synagogue meetings. And, round about 75 A.D. they had this big council, Rabbinic council, in a place called Jamnia which is on the, I think, I am not sure, the North West coast of the Holy Land. And, that was the rallying cry for God's Jewish people. One thing that came out of that was, hey presto, these Christians, Johnny Come Latelies had nothing to do with him, that was the cut off point.

If you were following Jesus of Nazareth then that was it. You were barred from the synagogues, from Jewish public life you were opposed and all the rest of it. That's one of the sad things really when previously if you remember back to the time of Peter and the others - ok there was an unresolved problem there in how you lived your life as a Christian, but and we go to the big but - you could still go to the temple as the apostles did, you could still join in temple worship, you were still part of the Jewish community. Ok, maybe you were a bit dotty that's how you were regarded. But you were part of God's people, his old people - not so after that and the tremendous bitterness, you get a lot of it in Matthew's Gospel.

It really springs from that time onwards and that is something you should keep in mind when we read the Gospels and John's Gospel as well. He has often been accused of being anti-Semitic. Well a lot of it is really if you put it in context. But coming back to Matthew. Matthew is writing for his own church, his own people, in the main, Jewish Christians - Jewish Christians were rejected, opposed even persecuted at times. So what does he do? He tells the tale of the Gospel and he starts where? He starts with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one God had promised to send - crucified, rejected but risen, raised to life by the Father. That's where it starts and you read the Gospel backwards, it begins to make sense then, not forwards. We understand life in our own lives backwards, but the only way we can live our lives is forward. And it was the same for the first Christians they learnt looking backwards, looking at what Jesus said, what he did, what it was all about, what Jesus was showing to them the Father. Matthew tilts his Gospel very heavily towards the Jews in the background, justifying the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, what are you doing accepting - that runs right through his Gospel.

Just to take a couple of small examples - today, for example, do you think Matthew says that He went up the hill there He sat down and was joined by His disciples and then He began to speak - this is what He taught them - or did he go up the hill? That's not what Matthew is saying- who is the guy who went up the hill? A very special hill, Mount Sinai, in particular Moses, the great Moses. He is the one who went up the hill and came down with that Covenant between God and his people and that's what Matthew is saying really-it doesn't matter whether Jesus was on the flat with plenty of grass or whatever. That's not what he is saying; he is saying "Hey look - this is the real Covenant that God is making with his people through the new Moses, greater than Moses". It is a very persuasive line throughout his Gospel, the next three chapters in Matthew you'll find so often it was said to them of old quoting the old law that I say to you - things like 'eye for eye', ' tooth for tooth', I say to you 'love your enemies', 'do good to those who persecute you'. The new Moses that's Jesus of Nazareth.

As so often in his Gospel Matthew harks back to the Jewish scriptures. Like for example we have just been celebrating the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord. Where Mary and Joseph take Jesus off to Egypt-did they? I don't know, does it matter? No, not in the least. What Matthew is saying that the founder of the place in Egypt for refugees, away from Herod -no, this was done that it might be fulfilled out of Egypt - I called my son.
A reference to God calling his people out of Egypt from the slavery. This was done to fulfil the prophecy of Matthew. That is his reading of the Jesus story, not a biography - he is seeing God at work in everything.

And, just one other example-we are used to talking about God asking Mary to be the mother of Jesus and that is, you know, the Angel Gabriel came along to Nazareth and said "Will you be the mother of God's son? In fact the power of the most High will come upon you." Well, read Matthew's Gospel that's not what Matthew writes the bones are the same the message is the same but God chose Mary, of all women on earth, to be the mother, the real true mother of His son. But who gets the news first? Joseph in a dream. Who looks after them, rescues them - Joseph is warned in a dream. Now wait a minute who is the big dreamer? The big dreamer. Matthew says straight off - remember Joseph carted off into Egypt, he was the dreamer and now our Joseph is the new dreamer. God gives his revelation through Joseph in a dream. So, I have gone on too long -sorry.

This year if you can read Matthew's Gospel slowly bit by bit and there's a tremendous amount in it, a tremendous amount that we can learn. Well that's a platitude isn't it of course there is a tremendous amount in it. But what you'll find is that he gives us a terrific insight, a fresh insight into Jesus the Jew. The Galilean peasant who became a Galilean peasant for you, for me -why? Because that's first of all what the Father wanted, secondly to save us and thirdly, strange as it may seem, because he loves us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen

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