Against the heretics (and their enablers)

Preached 4th Sunday of Easter (3rd May ) 2020, St Michael's, Stockwell (remotely)
Video (at 15:00)

Genesis 7
John 10.1-10
Good morning, it’s a great pleasure to speak to you, and this format has the huge advantage that I am not trying to control my children at the same time as give this sermon. On the other hand, it is a sight cruelty to ask me to preach about life, abundantly, as we have in the gospel, at a time when no-one is living life, abundantly.

In fact, by coincidence, yesterday marked forty days of not living it, though some will have had longer. And, much like Noah during his forty days of rain, we have endured forty days of isolation. Unlike Noah, we have access to the shops, in my case the Internet, and – hopefully - not the prospect of 150 more days to go. Noah, on the other hand did not have to, fairly badly, teach my children their maths.

I don’t know when we realised the flood didn’t literally happen, I imagine it was sometime in the nineteenth century. Perhaps doing the maths about the volume of water helped establish that clearly. As it’s a story we know so well though, it is worth thinking again about what it does mean. And listening to whole of Genesis 7 makes it even more obvious: this is about judgement. And it doesn’t get more judgemental than this. Almost all life is blotted out. The survivors number eight people; they alone are righteous. Though right now, I question the reward part of a story that requires you to spend the best part of 200 days with your sons.

Our gospel passage is about judgement too, though the context and the message are very different.

This passage in John follows a section where Jesus heals a blind man, who the Pharisees then question and criticise, saying ‘you were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us.’ And then they drive the blind man out.

Here, Jesus here is attacking them. And one of the great things about this passage is that even Jesus seems to get impatient with his own parables. I am reminded of my second favourite allegory* of the Trinity, which occurs in Gavin and Stacey, where the Welsh vicar attempts to explain the role of the three persons by means of a comparison with sandwiches and fillings. He then shouts furiously at Gavin, the English interloper, who he feels has ruined his metaphor by not understanding the point.

I imagine Jesus here very much like that vicar. Faced with the clear incomprehension of his listeners he tries again, and tries to make it as simple as possible. It’s worth repeating:

I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

This is judgement flipped on its head: it is not the people who are judged and found wanting. They are the ones who did not listen to the false prophets. Nor is it judgement like an inundation or a sifting out of those who have failed, It is a promise: I came that you may have life in abundance. It is hard right now not to think of the sheep as being like us in our current isolation – safe, but hardly living our most fulfilled life. Christ is come to promise something more than the necessity of life: abundance. What is that abundance? It is life with God, in this world and the next. John Chrysostom, the fourth century theologian, when he preached on this exact gospel passage, simply says, what is more than life? it is the Kingdom of Heaven. His commentary on other passages is much longer.

And so to the thieves. Who are they? What are they stealing? In the gospel, they are clearly the Pharisees, but this isn’t just about the false prophets of Israel, or even false prophets generally, though it is about both of them. It’s also about heresy. Talking about heresy is unfashionable, and no-one should be seeking to condemn other Christians over technicalities. But this passage does tell you why it matters: it’s because it’s a waste. There’s no hellfire; no flood; no test to fail. But the nature of our belief matters. That is why we study, and argue, and indeed preach on doctrine – to secure that promise. Heresy takes us away from the gate, away from God, away from abundant life, and robs us of the promise of the Kingdom. Not for nothing do we sing the hymn that ends ‘one church, one faith, one Lord.’

In the Old Testament, the symbol of the promise of God is the rainbow, shown to Noah after the flood subsides. Today, the country is using the same rainbow as a symbol of their hope and their promise of the future – one of a more abundant life than this lockdown. For us today, it is important we remember as Christians that the promise to us is of a more abundant life still, and that Jesus is the gate through which we find it.

* Graham Greene wrote my favourite