I took this morning’s New Testament reading from the lectionary. It’s an interesting passage for us to consider, because it’s a passage I have heard, many times in the past, weaponised against liberal Christians. We who have abandoned so-called ‘sound doctrine’ and followed after exactly what the passage warns against (at least that would be the charge) - teachings that satisfy our desires, our will, teachings that take us away from the “truth” towards mere myth. I’m obviously a big fan of myth, and was interested to see it used here in 2 Timothy in the pejorative sense, meaning fairy tale or fable. I looked up the Greek word, which is pronounced “mythous”, and I learned that it appears five times in the New Testament, and the word is always used in this pejorative sense, in the sense that we have (or the author has) “the truth”, whereas those ignorant people out there have been deceived by cleverly devised myths…

The two brothers, Cain and Abel, are the first two sons of Adam and Eve. It’s an episode which appears very early on in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In Genesis chapter 1 we have the first creation account, in chapter 2 the second creation account, in chapter 3 the whole ‘eating of the forbidden fruit’ incident, the first sin, and the couple’s subsequent expulsion from the garden of Eden. And then in chapter 4 is the story of Cain and Abel. The story goes like this: Once Adam and Eve had been expelled and were living outside of the garden of Eden, Eve bore Cain, and then she bore Abel. As far as the mythological account is concerned, Cain and Abel are therefore the first two people to be born of natural means. We’re told that Abel grew up to become a keeper of sheep, and Cain grew up to become a tiller of the ground. But for reasons we’ll get into, their relationship went sour. They became adversarial, and ultimately Cain murdered Abel.

Although I have referenced ‘Christ Consciousness’ several times from this pulpit I have never fully articulated what I understand it to be. It’s a way of recognising that in Jesus, there is something intrinsically more important than the mere words he spoke, more important than his teachings. Because teachings alone are problematic. A teaching, or a rule, or law, or precept, is by default a surface level thing, and Jesus wasn’t very concerned with surface level things. Whether we understand an individual to be adhering to a teaching or rule is, however, entirely dependent upon our observation of that person, on the external appearance of things. One might appear to be observant, following as they do the letter of the law, but in fact, be entirely disregarding the spirit of the law. To think about this in more depth, we can turn to some of the Mosaic Laws laid down in the Old Testament. Namely, the most well known, The Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shall not kill’, and ‘Thou shall not commit adultery’ to take two. In examining these two you will see just how wide the gulf can be between what we might instinctively feel these commandments are driving at, and how they were actually implemented.

So, to take the first ‘Thou shall not kill’ - pretty clear right? ‘Do not kill.’ Well, it is certainly not that straightforward…

“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” This morning I thought we could consider a set of parables often overlooked. We’re all familiar with the parable of the sower, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the parable of the lost sheep. But there is a set of parables that are often passed over, known as the Eschatology parables - the parables concerned with the end of days. Much like any religious teacher, Jesus has a handful of topics he cannot help returning to time and time again. And this is reflected in the parables (the teaching stories) he tells, most of which fit into five subject areas; and those are: 1) the Kingdom of Heaven (how to recognise, see it, and hear it); 2) the journey of the lost one; 3) on love and forgiveness generally; 4) on the nature of prayer; and finally, 5) on Eschatology. And out of those five, the most prevalent, the topics which Jesus returns to most often in his parables, are the Kingdom of Heaven, and most of all, eschatology. And yet that prevalence is certainly not reflected in sermons preached subsequently throughout the world over the last two millennia.

Our reading was the Parable of the Budding Fig Tree, one such eschatology parable. Jesus says in the same way that a fig tree becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, and so you know summer is approaching, so also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near…

The parable of the Lost Sheep, and the parable of the Lost Coin. At their most straightforward, they are both parables around the theme of being lost, lost individual, lost souls, and who are they lost from? God. And so God goes out of his way to find the lost individuals, and when he does, he rejoices; as the reading concludes ‘there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ That is the commonly given interpretation, that is the Sunday School version of the two parables if you like, but as is the case with most simple things, if we take the time to look closer, we tend to uncover hidden depths, hidden mysteries. So, let us begin by exploring the context.

We’re told Jesus is gathered with tax collectors and sinners, tax collectors being a group so sinful that they warrant special mention, and then ‘sinners’ being a catch-all term for all the other offenders present. The reason tax collectors (and this would be a reference to ‘Jewish tax collectors’) were seen as so deplorable, was that they were in service to the occupying force, the Roman Empire, and as such were regarded as being traitors against the Jewish people. Tax collectors’ livelihoods was literally dependent upon the oppression being wrought against fellow Jews…

This morning I’m going to be getting into the weeds of Acts - the passage we heard, the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. As we read the Bible, we encounter a wall of text, a text which can at times be pretty daunting and inaccessible. The Bible often assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of its readers. The New Testament assumes we’re familiar with the stories in the Hebrew Bible, St Paul’s letters assume we are broadly familiar with Jesus, his ministry, and the salient points of Christianity, and the whole biblical text, being written two thousand odd years ago, assumes we’re familiar with the cultural and social norms of first-century Palestine. There’s also the text itself. Although the Bible, with its multiple translations, has brought forth some of the most beautiful poetry and prose ever committed to paper or parchment, it is not all worthy of such acclamation. It is in parts, clunky, and in parts, dull, and that’s before you’ve even begun to consider some of the claims contained within its pages - those claims which are simply wrong or contradictory.

But the nice thing about the passage we read, in which Philip overhears the Eunuch reading from Isaiah (one of the books in the Hebrew Bible), is that the inexplicable nature of the Bible is acknowledged…

He is risen! He is risen indeed, hallelujah! There can be no doubt that without resurrection, without that event at the heart of Christianity, there could be no Easter, there could be no Christianity, there could be no dissenters who come along down the line, and thus, there could be no Ipswich Unitarians. The temptation is, within liberal church contexts such as ours, to avoid the crux of the matter on Easter morning. No doubt in many churches today, there are liberal religious ministers taking special pains to avoid St Paul’s stark words, as he states them plainly in 1 Corinthians (15:11-15): “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ.”

What are we sceptics to do, we who cannot believe? Paul is so critical to Christianity, we should surely be taking his lead, and yet, do we not find ourselves to be his adversaries, the very people that Paul condemns?