Sunday 5th February 2006 Epiphany 5

Fr David Peebles, Chaplain to the London School of Economics

Isaiah 40:21-31; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39

One of the most successful of British exports, besides the odd missile, is Inspector Morse.

We all enjoy a good mystery. The word ‘mystery’ is a good word, not just for those addicted to Morse or Agatha Christie, but for the Christian Church.

God is always ahead of us, never allowing us to possess him. He draws us into the future.

However, for the Christian the word has a much bigger meaning. In an Inspector Morse episode the purpose it to solve the mystery. The key to doing so lies in the putting together in the correct pattern the carious clues lying about the place. And, of course, once it has been solved, then it can be filed away and we can move on to something else.

For the Christian, ‘mystery’ lies at the heart of our experience of God in Christ. But it is a mystery which is not there to be solved, it is not essentially a problem, it is a Mystery to be entered into more deeply. It is always something which is beyond us, drawing us further into the life of God.

God is always ahead of us, never allowing us to possess him. He draws us into the future. So the future and Mystery are bound up together.

Some of you will perhaps remember David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham, famous for casting doubt on the Virgin Birth and for his support during the miners during the strike. I remember being at a seminar he was leading in which he said ‘ the answer to the question: when will the kingdom come in all of its fullness? is and always is, ‘not yet’. Isn’t theology wonderful?

My immediate thought was ‘isn’t that just a convoluted way of saying ‘never’? But actually on further reflection I began to realize it wasn’t. For ‘never’ means not now, nor in the future, but I think what Dr Jenkins was trying to help us see was that the future was present now and that the future was God’s future.

This, I think, should not come as too much of a shock, for after all when Jesus teaches us the Kingdom, he does so through words and actions. And there is a constant tension in the words and actions between the kingdom that is here and now and the kingdom yet to come.

Jesus ‘ parables, for instance, are not instruction, but exaggerated stories which are often about time…. The thief in who comes in the night: watch and be ready, and at the same time the Kingdom is here amongst you. The kingdom is both present and not yet.

In today’s gospel, Mark at the beginning of his Good News, has Jesus immediately bringing to life the kingdom through the healing of Peer’s mother-in-law and the exorcism of those possessed. Yet immediately Jesus moves on to other towns, even though great crowds have gathered. He will not allow himself to be kept in one place, to be turned into something he is not. In reading Mark’s Gospel one always has this sense of breathlessness, of constant movement, of never sitting still. Jesus is almost like an electrical charge which surges through the towns and people, disrupting and disturbing, healing and transforming and of course the moment he is captured he is executed.

St Paul’s reflections in the NT lesson, I think give us a clue to why this is the case. The Good News of Christ does not enter our culture as a conquering ideology. As he says: ‘for though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all that I might win the more.’ (1 Cor 9: 19)

The power of the Gospel is not the power of destruction, or domination, but the power of transforming from within, of making new.

And the Christ who comes to us to make all things new, does so not as a kind of religious solution to the world’s problems, forcing itself into our world. But as the one who comes in humility and love, transforming our culture into God’s culture, by recognizing those who are least important, and are religiously impure.

The possessed, the leper, the victim of our culture, the ones we fear and despise, the ones we need to condemn in order to justify ourselves. And it is the central mystery of our faith that it will be through the condemnation of this Jesus that we will be truly justified.

Jesus does not solve the Mystery of God. He deepens it. So that what is revealed in Him is God’s hiddenness, in flesh and blood.

But if this kingdom of which Christ is the embodiment is to be non-violent, non-destructive, and not simply another ideology competing for power in the market place of the world’s competition, then it must always remain ahead of us. The not yet. That which disrupts and leads deeper into Mystery.

The future, in other words is not ours, it is God’s and it is in Him we find hope. For there he stands in Christ before us, allowing us endlessly to pick up the pieces, to start again, to see ourselves afresh, to find newness in the midst of disappointment, never allowing anything or anyone to be a total failure: the always ‘not yet’ which frees us from our violence and self-deceit and bring us into the clear light of day. Amen