Vigeon Post

TRINITY I 2006

Happy Fathers' Day to all our dads and granddads !

As I read over this morning's Old Testament lesson - my twisted mind said to itself- well - they even had the Weakest link in those days - or maybe it wouldhave been more appropriately Big Brother. Samuel the great prophet and spiritual leader of Israel realises that God had not made a good choice in making Saul kingof Israel. Perhaps we had better start again. Samuel sets off to Bethlehem where old man Jesse lives . The people of the village are rather wary of this

powerful old man, a bit scared,  because they know that he and the King are no longer good

 friends. But he reassures them  - "I've just come to take a service he says". And

 that reassures them.   A Vicar taking a service is just about the most innocuous 

thing you can imagine isn't it ?
Well they couldn't have bargained on what happened then. Samuel does a roll call of

 Jesse's remarkable family. All boys ! and big strong mature responsible young men they 

all are. 

Everyone fit to be a celebrity. Its all a bit pantomimish. Cinderella was in the 

kitchen when Dandini calls - David is out looking after the sheep - both of them 

were thought unimportant enough to miss the show..  But Samuel knows something 

is missing and so David is fetched for -  God doesn't want a big brother he wants

 a kid  brother apparently.  Good looking, lovely eyes he had - and red haired - 

as someone wrote once - whoever heard of a red head Jew !  He was different; he 

was as we say these days charismatic.
You can never tell with genes. One of the marvels of every family is how the 

same background and the same genes turn out such a variety of children. So 

young David is anointed to be the next king - Gods chosen one . 
You can read David [and Jesus'] family tree in the first chapter of St Matthew.  

It's a real Fathers Day saga - its a list of all the fathers before Joseph 

husband of Mary. But it is particularly interesting for the mothers it mentions 

 It begins  ' the genealogy of Jesus Christ  the Son of David the son of Abraham".

 As you read down it you realise that the family tree is not quite what you would 

expect of  Jesus Christ.  For the first son of David was of course King Solomon and

 Solomon was the child conceived in adultery by Bathsheba who was married to Uriah,

 one of David's officers and who you remember was discreetly bumped off in battle 

so that David could marry his wife.  Not a good start we might think. Go back a

generation or two and we find that Jesse was descended from Boaz whose wife was

 Ruth .  We know and love that story. But we 

forget the scandal. Israeli Boaz married Ruth the  Palestinian !  She was 

certainly not a Jew .  Go back a bit further and find another ancestor called 

Salmon. His wife was called Rahab. Who was Rahab ? she was  a prostitute in 

Jericho who collaborated with Joshua's spies and was spared in the holocaust 

that followed the fall of the city. Go back even further and come to Judah 

who was one of the sons of Jacob, the one who sold Joseph for twenty pieces

of silver to the traders.  One of the nastiest pieces in the whole blood 

line is how a lass called Tamar was married to Judah's son, who then died. 

She was left a widow without children. so in desperation she dresses up as 

a  prostitute and seduces her own father in law in order to get herself a 

child.  
You know -  the Sun and the News of the World are really very dull compared 

with the Bible! There is nothing new under the Sun when we are talking headlines.
It certainly seems that God made some surprising choices when he looked for his 

celebrities. Even St Paul ponders how God apparently preferred the cheating

 double crossing, mothers boy  Jacob to his elder brother - the hard working

 Esau.   Joseph of the amazing technicoloured dream coat must have been an 

insufferable little prig to have wound up his brothers so badly - he had 

to learn his lesson the hard way but he remained a bossy boots to the

 end of his life.
And David was not only the sweet psalmist of Israel  with lovely eyes; 

but he was also a ruthless,  devious and ambitious war lord who let 

nothing stand in his way.  One of the bits we never read in church 

is how when on his death bed he calls to Solomon his son and says 

like the godfather he was "You know son,  there are certain 

gentlemen around who are not my friends and so they are not

 your friends either. You know that I promised them their 

lives as long as I lived.  Well - you never made that promise 

- so as soon as I am dead you know what to do - nudge nudge 

wink wink"  So Solomon of course sends in his death squads.  
God in the Old Testament seems to have chosen some strange 

characters to be his celebrities.    Perhaps that is the point.  

The Old Testament is there to provide the agenda for change; 

the Old Testament tells it how it is in our real world.  

People sometimes say to me "Its a wicked world, Vicar. 

Its never been as bad as this." And I will reply 'You are wrong 

- it has always been as bad as this one way or another. 

This is how the world is'
So this is where the fun stops.
Well not quite the end for I cannot refrain from one more 

story. Forty odd years ago Bob Lord was Chairman of Burnley 

Football (Soccer) Club; and poured a lot of his fortune into

making it one of the top teams in the country.Alec, my church

 warden, who was a prominent Mason came to me - "Owen, Can you 

help. I have been asked to propose the toast of Bob Lord and 

they will expect me to quote the bible to them. Can you think 

of a good text ?"
I thought hard and came back to him.  Why not tell him that 

a prominent player called St Paul wrote  "Whether we are at

home or away we belong to the Lord and we make it our aim 

to please him".  And that of course introduces today's New 

Testament reading from Two Corinthians.
Very often I feel, we hear the epistles of Paul and presume 

that he is chuntering on about something but we are not quire

 sure what and so don't really take too much notice.  But very 

often he comes out with something outstandingly important.
So it is today.  He is saying that the death of Christ on the

 cross was a cut off point for the human race. "From now on 

therefore we regard no one from a human point of view; even 

though we once knew Christ from a human point of view we know

 him no longer in that way. If anyone is in Christ -we would

 say 'if anyone is a Christian' - there is a new creation. 

Everything old has passed away - everything has become new'.

 In a word - it doesn't matter what colour hair David had or

 even Jesus had. We are not to look back to find meaning in 

the past, to find meaning in typical fallible human lives.

 We are not to look back and be traumatised by our feeling 

of guilt for our past.   Just think how many of the terrible 

situations of today's world owe their origin to the telling 

and re-telling of  dangerous myths; men like to remind their 

folk  of past histories, past misdeeds and treacheries; past

 injustices done to them by their neighbours. Even today 

Campbells and McDonalds in Scotland are uneasy allies since 

the massacre of Glencoe in 1689.
Sometimes we are urged to apologise to those people who have

 been badly affected by our ancestors in the days long gone. 

The people of Bristol are to apologise for their part in the 

slave trade.  Christians are asked to apologise to the Muslims 

for the Crusades of the middle ages. Nobody seems to ask Muslims 

to apologise for their conquest of Jerusalem which was of course 

a Christian city before the Muslims arrived. All of which is 

simply to point out how impracticable it is to mend history like 

that; we are not the people of the past; and perhaps such attempts

 to promote reconciliation only serve to stir up bad feelings . To

 be a Christian, Paul suggests, is to take up Christ's offer of a 

new start - we are called to be people of the future, not wedded 

to the past. While you and I; while churches and religions and 

communities and countries  cherish their past and use it for an

 agenda for the present day there can be no solution to the troubles

 that beset us on all sides.  Every thing old has passed away - says

 Paul - history is all dead and gone; we are no longer in thrall to 

the past. Dwelling on the past only spoils the present and frustrates

 the future.  If anyone is a Christian there is a new creation, a new 

beginning, a new start. That sounds great - it sounds a wonderful 

prescription for the future.  The  problem is that asking people to 

forget the past and start again is asking something so sacrificial 

that it must seem like a death. Which is perhaps Paul's point. The

 old me has to die; the old church has to die; the old country , the 

old world has to die and so on forever. Only so can there be a new 

start. 
Let me end with two examples of what Paul might have meant by a new 

beginning. Sally's late cousin Mack was the Roadmaster for Ulster, 

 a civil engineer responsible for the upkeep of roads in the province

 - not an easy job in those days of bombs under bridges.
He was also  Churchwarden of his parish church and an ardent very 

committed Protestant Ulsterman.  But I remember one day in 1969, 

when we were over the water for the Confirmation of  Sally's goddaughter,

  how he said in a moment of truth.
"Owen,[he said] I certainly don't want the border to go.  I would 

fight on to the end to keep it as it is. But if I am to be realistic, 

if the border went tomorrow, I guess in three years I would have 

forgotten it ever existed".  You have to know the man to realise 

what an admission that was and what a tribute to his inner honesty.
A few years ago a book was published called "The Railway Man".  

It was told by a chap who was a prisoner of war who was forced 

to work on the ill famed Burmah railroad by the Japanese. After 

the war he [who worked for British Rail] went to an international

 conference on railways and found that the engineer officer who 

brutalised him in the war was now  a delegate from the Japanese 

railways.  The crux of the story was how he realised that something

 had to be done. The two men met - they put the past behind them 

and actually started talking to one another. The author puts it 

like this "Sooner or later the hating has to stop".
If we want a new world, if we want a new church, if I want a new me 

- then it is good bye to the past and all it means. There has to be 

a cut off point. There has to be a point where all the hating has 

to stop.  I believe that is the true Christian response.
Week by week you and I come into church and remember all this. 

We say the general confession and ask forgiveness for the past

 so that we can put it behind us. We are the people of our baptism;

 we are the people of the new start. Christian experience is that 

we keep on falling over and over again -  and have to be picked up

 over and over again. And as he picks us up the Lord says - " never

 mind - lets start again shall we ? " We must always let him do this.  

The important thing is what is sometimes called the sacrament of the 

present moment. Now is the time, now is the moment, now is the 

challenge to start again -  now - this moment - this morning is the

 opportunity held out to each of us to become God's new people .